The generics of translation

Martin Geisler martin at geisler.net
Thu Jul 5 12:58:56 CDT 2012


Matt Mackall <mpm at selenic.com> writes:

> On Mon, 2012-07-02 at 18:34 +0200, Adrian Buehlmann wrote:
> 
>> And perhaps this should be taken off-list, if the discussion
>> continues in German. Matt doesn't seem to like discussions in
>> non-English on this list.
>
> Ugh. Moving this discussion off-list is _exactly_ counter to my point.
> Instead, you're practically painting me as someone who insists on
> English just because he arbitrarily hates foreigners or something.
> Thanks!

So you're saying you have non-arbitrary reasons to hate them? :-)

Adrian only said that he's got the impression that you prefer English
discussions here -- which I think we all do. There was no implication
that you hates foreigners there.

> EVERY word choice decision, even though it looks like it's just
> language-specific trivia on the surface, is going to be rooted in more
> generic principles. Formulating those principles 11 times each in 11
> languages is the wrong process. And just choosing words based on what
> feels right at a given moment is also the wrong process.

I agree that it's good to formulate some principles for this. But let me
also say that it's tedious and boring work to translate software, and so
I think we should be extremely grateful that people want to invest any
time doing so!

So if they feel word "x" is right, then I'm happy to let them use it as
a start. Later, users can come and complain about the translation and it
can be improved.

> When translating a Mercurial-specific term like "pull":
>
> - distinguish between usage as a literal command name (untranslated) and
> as jargon (translated)
> - translate the components of the metaphor (ie "push and pull a stack of
> papers") to a natural set in the target language so that people can
> benefit from the metaphor

I must admit that I have no idea what that metaphor refers to: I don't
know what it means to "pull a stack of papers". I know what it means to
push something *onto* a stack -- and from computer science I know that
you then pop it off again later.

> - if there's no obvious translation of the metaphor, consider using a
> transliteration. Note that "transliteration" is generally the same as
> "exact copy" for languages using a Latin alphabet

That can unfortunately be difficult -- there are languages where the
article (of which there can be several and so you need to pick one)
affects the conjugations of the words and become part of the word.

Danish is simple:

  a bookmark: et bogmærke
  the bookmark: bogmærket

The article "et" was added as a suffix to the root "bogmærke", so it
cannot just be an exact copy. The article will also affect things like
adverbs.

-- 
Martin Geisler

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