Re: Translation of program names

[Danilo Segan <dsegan gmx net>]

Дана четвртак, 30. октобар 2003. 06:34:43 CET, Ross Golder написа:
> I see your point, but especially where names are amusing plays on
> English words, translating them would cause more confusion than
> anything, as the user may not understand English enough to understand
> the pun.

Exactly, but if translator did a good job (you do consider that's
possible, right?), user wouldn't have to understand English at all to
understand the pun. That's one of my points. It's not like English
language is the richest language in the world :-P

> Also a name is a unique identifier. For example, I'm English and my
> name is Ross. When I tell Thai people my name, they think I'm saying
> 'Rose', and usually mention 'dok mai' (the Thai translation for
> Rose).

In real world, I wouldn't be surprised to see more "Ross's" and more
"Golder's", perhaps even more "Ross Golder's". As a matter of fact, my
last name is not common in Serbia, yet there's a totally unrelated man
who has the same name as my father. There goes the 'uniqueness' ;-)

OTOH, from a users' standpoint, program name is also not a unique
identifier. Unique identifiers are fields like following in .desktop
files:

Exec=rhythmbox
...
X-GNOME-Bugzilla-Product=rhythmbox

If those are not unique, we've got a problem. In other cases, there's  
no major problem at all.

So, I don't think original name should be an identifier. It could be
used to differentiate between different apps, but it shouldn't be
visible to the user at all, unless he asks for it.

> However, once this is over and done with, they don't refer to me as
> 'dok mai', they call me Ross, because that is my name. Sometimes they
> might call me Loss, or Rot, but this is simply because of
> pronunciation difficulties
> (I think because they have their own alphabet). I imagine they
> picture my name in their minds for their own memory's sake as 'รอส'..
> or something similar.
>
> I can see the merit of giving a local language translation of the
> name, for interests sake, but I'd say the place for that would be in
> the About dialog, for those that are interested (including a version
> of the word using the native alphabet, where applicable), but I'm not
> sure the About dialog is geared up for that.

Actually, I think the *original* name should be given in the About
dialog along with translation, for those that are interested. You need
the original name if:
- you want to contribute
- you have a problem, and noone who knows your language can help you
- you want to talk with someone else about it, who doesn't know your  
language

So, these cases would be few, and only those few should check the About
dialog, and see the original name. Just like there are a few Englishmen
who need to look up 'Germany' in a dictionary (see below) to find out
it's actually 'Deutschland'.

For example, most languages have separate names for many things (like
most people call Hungary a "Hungary", instead of "Magyar...", what they
call themselves, or "Germany" for "Deutschland"). So, it's quite common
to have proper names "translated" (it's not always a translation per
se, but different and unrelated words are used), so that argument is
void in terms of "current practice". And as I said before, with free
software, we don't have to worry about trademarks or such. You don't
have to "protect" your program name. Damn, everyone can rerelease your  
software with a different name, and there you go ;-)

> In normal use, I would say the original name should be used, in the
> original alphabet too, where possible.

Yes, and I suppose this "in the original alphabet too, where possible"
means that it should use Latin alphabet (English is default development
language for Gnome). But, it's completely unreadable for many users.

For understanding Serbian language, and Serbian translation of Gnome,
it's not essential to know latin script. So, if someone doesn't know
how to read it, program names become completely unusable.

In my previous message I used transliteration, but imagine that you've
got names like 'Спознаја', 'Ћулибрк', or similar. Yeah, you cannot even
*read* it, let alone remember it. It's even really hard to compare it
with others, since you have absolutely no information about it. So, put
yourself in a position of someone who doesn't know the latin script,
and try to read the program name, to share it with others.

I know that the default requirement for people *developing* Gnome is to
know English, and to use it for code, comments and UI. But we're
talking of people who might have never had to learn latin alphabet.
Yeah, it might seem rare in circumstances all of us are living in, but
Gnome is supposed to be used by non-hackers, non-geeks and non-long-
time computer users.

And setting a requirement for people to learn entirely new script in
order to be able to say what program they're using is crap, at least in
my opinion.

(Of course, Serbian is a bad example, because latin transliteration is
tought in 2nd grade of primary school, and it's also officially
recognized, though cyrillic is used in official documents. But there
are environments where people don't know, and don't need to know other
scripts; still, letters like y, x, w, q are not present in Serbian
Latin script, so people would actually have to learn English to be able
to say out loud names like 'Rhythmbox'; when they learn English, why
should they need a translation?)

> Just my opinion :) I appreciate that their may be encoding
> difficulties implied in keeping with a name in it's original
> character se

It's not just encoding difficulties. It's *reading* and *understanding*
difficulties. How much do you appreciate a name like 'Данило Шеган' --
perhaps I should start subscribing myself always like this, because
that's "what my name is". So, am I going to torture every reader of my
message instead of helping them read my name easier, and providing just
approximate identifier? Yeah, you wouldn't even be able to pronounce my
name correctly if written in Serbian latin transliteration like 'Danilo
Šegan'.

When glyphs on the screen don't have a meaning to you (for instance,
just imagine you're glancing over name for some Arabic program, and you
don't know Arabic -- how would you tell me about it? You don't know how
to type it, you don't know how to read it. *That name is unusable*),
they're just little pictures. And I must admit that those're some
pretty hard to understand pictures (they don't represent a hammer, a
flower, or something, but eg. two lines crossing for 'X').


I agree that there are problems with translating program names, but I'm
still not convinced that they're larger than the benefits. Especially
if you accept the fact that not all potential users of Gnome need to
understand and be familiar with roman/latin alphabet. Or am I wrong,
and this indeed is a requirement?


Cheers,
Danilo