Re: Translation of program names

[Danilo Segan <danilo gnome org>]

Дана недељa, 02. новембар 2003. 02:08:56 CET, Evan Martin написа:
> With that said, my personal opinion is that the "brand name" argument
> made elsewhere is a good one-- something like "Спознаја" should stay
> "Спознаја" or "Spoznaja" because than name is only useful as a
> potentially meaningless mark used to uniquely identify the program.
> For example, "sodipodi" means nothing to me, but I still identify and
> use the program.  And though "epiphany" does mean something to me, it
> doesn't help me identify it as a web browser.

If names were there only to use as identifiers, I guess you'd be right.  
But *luckily*, they're not. They have a lot of other meaning that is  
interesting to some (not all, and probably not even to majority). But I  
am hoping to pass those interesting bits to those who use my  
translation.

If it weren't so, I'd propose a different naming scheme for Gnome  
applications. We could start with developer platform, and enumerate:
- glib: 0
- gtk: 1
- libgnome: 2
...

So, I had a problem yesterday of using "f" of package "35" (or simply,  
"using 35f"), because it interacts badly with game 42b; and I was  
wondering if anyone can help me solve it. :-)

Aren't these enough to serve as identifiers? How come nobody uses such  
a scheme, yet, it's as much understandable, usable and easy to remember  
as scheme from foreign language? Surely no one will have problem  
differentiating between web browser 45 and web browser 73 (the one from  
5th category ;-).

> The point with GNOME menus is for the generic application task ("web
> browser") to be used and translated; we only need "brand names" to
> distinguish between applications that fulfill the same task, and in
> that case an arbitrary name does just as well as any other jumble of
> letters, because I can't know what makes the applications different
> without trying each of them out anyway.  (Going back to (1), though--
> it's much easier for me to remember/distinguish "sodipodi" from
> "kontour" than it would be for me to distinguish two Cyrillic names.)

I'm giving up. The "problem" you mention here is one of distinguishing  
different apps that serve the same purpose by name. But I don't see why  
do you *mind* translation in here -- there's no rational explanation  
that translation would provide any adverse effects, unless you think  
some translator would choose to translate name of Galeon and Epiphany  
in the same way? I find that _highly_ unlikely.

Perhaps you have mistaken this for that previous thread? This  
discussion is not directly related to it, and I'm not questioning any  
of points brought there.

Name of program (eg. Epiphany, Nautilus) is used all over, so we've got  
messages like 'Nautilus cannot open this file', or 'Use Epiphany to  
load this page'. If name is not translated, it's really hard (if not  
impossible) to do declinations (this means that words change forms  
based on declination, eg. in nominative it's 'Spoznaja', while in  
genitive it's 'Spoznaju' and instrumental is 'Spoznajom', so it would  
be 'Use Spoznaju to view this page', or 'View this page with  
Spoznajom'; I cannot determine what suffix should I put for "Epiphany",  
because it's not a word of Serbian language; and keeping just one form  
all over is even uglier and grammatically incorrect; transliteration  
doesn't solve this problem fully). I hope I need not repeat all the  
other benefits of using translation (what's worse, I'm usually  
repetitive in same message, as Christian already pointed out ;-).

All the real reasons for keeping the name untranslated can be solved  
quite easily. Bug buddy provides solution for one of the most frequent  
problem already, and it's not a problem for translator to put original  
name along with translated one in About dialog, which basically sorts  
all other problems out.

All of this sounds a lot like "you don't know why it's not good, but  
you know it's not" (ok, I am overreacting, there are some valid points  
in the "cons" section of my previous mail, but not that they're  
impossible to solve).

> So: (in my opinion,) marking application names as translatable makes
> sense, but only so they can be transliterated.

I'd really like some real explanation of why do you think so (so I  
could see where am I wrong [if I am at all :-P]). In your message, you  
simply explain how different names are used in Gnome menus, which seems  
completely irrelevant.

Please take a look at my list of pros and cons of performing  
translation at  
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2003-October/msg00747.html

If you do disagree with any of the points I raised there, please do  
point them out. Otherwise, I'm not going to repeat myself anymore, and  
my excuses to everyone who was bothered by this thread.

Cheers,
Danilo