The generics of translation

Fabian Kreutz fabian.kreutz at qvantel.com
Thu Jul 5 13:35:20 CDT 2012


Hello!

Matt Mackall wrote:

> Please ACTUALLY read the first half of this:
> http://markmail.org/message/6vqmehwkivibdaoy
> I don't care if you like my proposed rules, that _not the point_.

I'm sorry, I am currently not receiving mailing list emails. I was
added in CC some time later.
As such, I was not referring to your point at all when I answered
the email.

Your suggestions sound great. They are formulated well.
But I don't see that they can really prevent disagreements in language
teams, because (correctly) you have to say "consider using this" and not
"Use this!"
So when I choose not to consider a transliteration of push and pull
because there are no such operations on stacks of paper in german and
I also don't feel the version tree with it's many branches is a stack
of papers, I will still vote for more transfer related terms (abrufen,
übertragen) than transliterations (pull and push).  But now the
transliteration-fan will argue that "it says so in the rules".

There will be discussions and probably there must be discussions.
I at least find it quite vital if people question rules and disagree
and discuss freely.


Adrian Buehlmann wrote:


> In Switzerland we use "abholen" for fetching emails (broad use, not just
> among developers). I guess you use "abrufen" in Germany.

Yes, I guess so. I'm not living in germany and am somewhat afraid that the
most used term is "mail checken". But abrufen, rather than abholen, would
be the classier term.

> People say whatever they want. Not what you use in a translation.

True. Unless they are learning the concepts from the help pages.
Or maybe somebody writes a book using the terms that are defined in the
help pages.


> I looked at the German help text displayed for "hg help merge". The
> worst fit isn't even "Zusammenführen". It happens to be the German word
> "Revision". "Revision" here means something so completely different,
> that it can't be used in Switzerland:

Now that you mention it...
We never thought much about that word. It's so rarely used for the meanings
that you mention, that we assumed it to be a good fit.  In a way, we left it
unquestioned.
So, please continue complaining. :)
Also I remember reading somewhere for the english original version, that the
terms "changeset", "revision" and "version" are used interchangeably.


> Seeing "Revision" in a Swiss German text used for mercurial's "revision"
> is completely confusing. Here, an exact transliteration is producing an
> error. Unfortunately.

So what do you propose as alternative? Version?
I'm all for it!


> There are so many differences between German German and Swiss German.
> For example, Germans are always astonished when they read "stossen"
> (Eng. "push") on one side of doors here in CH. In DE they use "drücken"
> :-). And we find "drücken" funny when we happen to be in Germany.


Indeed, "stossen" is more abrupt and rough compared to "drücken" which
is a more continuous action, like what you do on the toilet (what is it
with me and the toilet references? ;) )

> But I think I should shut up and start a de_ch.po instead.

I've never been to Swizerland, so I can't tell.
But since we are scarce on contributors I hope we can manage the thing
somehow. Is it not possible that you work on de.po in general and
sync via diff and patch into de_ch, which differs only in few places?

Bye, Fabian


More information about the Mercurial-devel mailing list