On Fri, 21 Aug 2009, George Ker wrote:When I originally got 17 translations of Pd some years ago, what I received mostly translated "Slider" into their own language (a majority of the 16 non-English language files), instead of keeping it as-is. It depends on which word. Toggle was less often translated, and Bang was almost always kept as-is.
I recommend for terms like: Object, Atom Box, Symbol, Bang, Slider, Patch etc that no Greek translation should be done. Yes, of course I know what an "Object" means , and "Atom Box" could easily be translated, but wouldn't it be a drawback for users?
I think it's mostly better to translate the words than not, even though a fair amount of the population sticks with English just so that the computer vocabulary is in English. There is plenty of room for localisations that would use the English words for computer vocabulary, but somehow, it seems no-one ever bothers making any.
I live in a society where the opposition between the two manners of speaking is intense. Basically, we're so self-conscious about how much English we use in talking about computer things, that we can't possibly write a book with those words: all those words have to be translated to French. AFAIK, other places in the world are becoming more sensitive to that. I just happened to live in a place where it mattered more and it mattered earlier.Where's the ugliness coming from? a shame insidiously infused into your people by the American Empire? You didn't question the beauty of the English words when you learned them, did you? I didn't either. I talk like that because it's a problem that I'm all too familiar with. It took me a long time to figure out the "ugliness" factor... and factor it out... to the extent that we can.
Even for me, the translator of the app would be confusing if all tutorials / help patches/ lists were using them... and then I had to face with terms: Object, Slider, Patch, DSP etc translated in Greek language in my installed App! I asked a friend of mine and he wouldn't use the translated app either! I find it like translating the MIDI acronyms. Too ugly and scary...
Besides, much of my computer is running in English, because I've ran it in English for way too long, out of habit, just like you; yet if I set up Linux in some (French-language) institution, I install it in French without asking anyone's advice. It's just normal. I may switch my own computer to French someday, and I already switched the default language of webpages to be French (but it only works on multilanguage pages that support it and detect it).
I don't mind about the licence but wouldn't it be right for me to impress girls in my college more easily after my work in translation of the PD app????
Contrast this with the DesireData translations in which not only the translator's name is at the top of the file, it's also in Help->About. I am very proud of having gotten translations. But then, DesireData's translations cover much more than 10 times the amount of text that Hans' project does. Perhaps it's a matter of scale and eventually more translators would demand that credit is given where credit is due.
-The last and more serious problem is that I can't test my gr.po file. Everything needs to be done with sudo to run and be installed properly
>From the experience of my own project, I can say it's a lot nicer to be able to test things without having to do "make install".
To skip the sudo, you could use ./configure's --prefix option combined with a custom PATH (if you need one).