Translating Jargon

[Martin Geisler]

Tristan Wibberley <tristan at wibberley.org> writes:

Hi Tristan,

Thanks for the advice on the words.

> [...]
>
> changeset:
> 	n. collection of 0 or more primitive changes
> 	   with regard to its place in the history graph
> 	   probably shouldn't be translated as just "change (n)" but maybe
> "ændresamling" as "altersession (n)" or something like that - does
> Danish work like that and does that sound right to a mercurial user?

Danish does infact work like that -- it is correct Danish to build new
words by putting old words together.

The literal translation would be 'ændringsmængde', but 'samling' is also
not bad at all! But I think I'll be satisfied with having started this
project, and then leave the finer language details to someone who has
more experience with Danish software.

> If it can't be made to work like that, make something different up
> based on its use. Somebody had to make up "changeset" for English
> users so somebody will have to do that for Danish users too.

Yeah... :-)

> What do other vcs' use for this purpose - what do Danish mercurial
> users say to each other in a Danish conversation about a mercurial
> repository?

Heh, we (I) use a mix of Danish and English words, and even use Danish
conjugation rules on the English words... it's not pretty :-)

When I started with computer science I quickly decided to write all my
assignments in English in order to avoid this very problem.

> It is important to not confuse jargon and general purpose language.
> Jargon is invented for a reason and it is invented differently per
> user population and per language.
>
>> On the other hand, the bookmark concept is an example of a very good
>> concept: we use bookmarks in Denmark too :-) So this concept is easy
>> to translate into something meaningful.
>
> You should use the same word as the Danish localisation of Firefox. It
> is important to understand the etymology of jargon when translating it
> to a language that hasn't independently evolved its own for the same
> purpose.

Looking at other related software projects is a good idea --
unfortunately neither Git nor Bazaar seems to be localized. And I found
no Danish translation for Subversion.

-- 
Martin Geisler

VIFF (Virtual Ideal Functionality Framework) brings easy and efficient
SMPC (Secure Multiparty Computation) to Python. See: http://viff.dk/.
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