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List:       kde-i18n-doc
Subject:    color kcm translation (was: [KDE Usability] Description of "contrast"
From:       Matthew Woehlke <mw_triad () users ! sourceforge ! net>
Date:       2009-08-24 21:08:08
Message-ID: h6uvfo$t49$1 () ger ! gmane ! org
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Maciej Pilichowski wrote:
> On Monday 24 August 2009 21:13:15 Albert Astals Cid wrote:
>> Of course that's possible, but why one would want to make a more
>> incomplete/imprecise translation?
> 
> Because it does not fit the screen. But I think that it is better to 
> decide up to translator -- she/he knows the language after all and 
> such tips may do more harm than good.
> 
> Besides, in such case, I would opt to wait and see if this is really 
> problem (i.e. if translators need such tips).

They do. Which reminds me, I'd like to commit the attached and edit 
various i18n comments/extracomments to point at it.

Basically this is a guide for translators how to translate text in the 
color kcm for best usability, for elements where the text itself isn't 
necessarily as important as how many characters long the translations 
are. It covers rationale as well as suggestions for several areas of 
translation.

Any thoughts? Is this sort of thing acceptable, and if not, anyone have 
any better ideas?

-- 
Matthew
Please do not quote my e-mail address unobfuscated in message bodies.
-- 
First time I've gotten a programming job that required a drug test. I 
was worried they were going to say 'you don't have enough LSD in your 
system to do Unix programming'. -- Paul Tomblin  (from cluefire.net)

["README.i18n" (text/plain)]

There are two sets of preview strings in the color kcm, with special translation \
needs. In general, length of the translations, and "gist"-level clarity is more \
important than precise translation. It should be easy to identify what color role a \
string represents, but there are size considerations that should be taken into \
account. The tooltips should be translated normally.



When translating the color kcm, it is helpful to understand the intended meaning of \
the various color roles. Hopefully the sets (view, window, button, selection, \
tooltip) are obvious, as well as normal background/foreground. The others are as \
follows:

Alternate [Background]: used in lists when every other row uses a different color; \
                "different".
Inactive: comments, something which is old, unimportant/uninteresting/secondary text
Active: e.g. something new, something active (currently engaged in activity), \
                something requesting attention, a hovered hyperlink
Link: hyperlink, somewhere the user can go, new history
Visited: visited hyperlinks, somewhere the user has been, old history
Negative: "bad", untrusted, unreliable, a mistake, an error the user made, an error \
                that occurred
Neutral: warning, encrypted, anything "between" negative and positive
Positive: success, completion messages, trusted content

For Link, although other uses are possible, translate as referring to hyperlinks to \
minimize user confusion.



The "generic" preview uses these strings (all with ambiguation "color-kcm-preview"):
- Window Text
- Push Button
- Normal Text
- Selected Text
- link
- visited
- a
- i
- !
- =
- +

The two-word strings may be translated normally, though it is suggested to omit the \
translation of "Text" if the strings would be excessively long and doing so does not \
cause confusion. The "link" and "visited" strings should be translated according to \
the notes above, ideally keeping the length to four to eight characters; abbreviation \
(to not less than four characters if possible) is acceptable as the tooltips will \
provide more complete descriptions.

The remaining one-character strings represent (respectively) the text roles active \
(a), inactive (i), negative (!), neutral (=) and positive (+). These should be \
translated as one- or two-character strings which uniquely correspond to the \
aforementioned text roles, ideally taking the first letter of the corresponding \
translation, or maintaining the symbols (!, =, +) as-is if culturally appropriate.

Ideographic languages (e.g. Japanese, Mandarin, etc.) where the single-character \
strings can be replaced with one or two characters representing the full word should \
do so. These should also, if needed, consider a phonetic representation or relevant \
phrase for the longer elements, to keep the translations close to the same number of \
characters as the English.



The "set" preview uses these strings (all with disambiguation \
                "color-kcm-set-preview"):
- normal
- link
- visited
- active
- inactive
- alternate
- negative
- neutral
- positive
- hover
- focus

These live in a preview widget that is two rows tall by nine items wide, and is often \
the determining factor in the minimum width of the dialog. For this reason, it is \
important to keep the strings SHORT. To ensure each text block is of sufficient size \
to provide an adequate preview, each should be at least a few characters long, but \
please try to limit them to no more than eight or ten characters on average. \
Abbreviation is fine and encouraged if necessary to achieve this average. In \
particular, PLEASE avoid adding the translated equivalent of " text" to these strings \
if at all possible; the tooltips will disambiguate if required. If these objectives \
cannot be achieved via direct translation, semantic translation (e.g. "negative" -> \
i18n("oops!"), "neutral" -> i18n("meh")) would be better. (Ideographic languages, \
which may need to ADD text to achieve a minimum length, should ignore the previous \
two sentences.)



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