Re: Translation of program names

[Christian Rose <menthos gnome org>]

tor 2003-10-30 klockan 06.00 skrev Danilo Segan:
[...]
> So, I'm wondering what's the opinion of both translators and hackers  
> about having their program names translated (or at least leaving that  
> option to translators)?

I classify names into two entirely different types:

1) Descriptive names.
   These are names that clearly describe the application's function.

   Examples: Calculator
             Terminal
             GNOME Games
             GNOME System Tools
             etc.


2) "Nonsense" branding names.
   These are names that might or might not mean anything in English, but
   even if they mean something it's not directly related to the purpose
   of the application. The main purpose of these names is typically to
   give an unique "brand" to the application, and what the name really
   means is off less importance, or no importance at all. The names
   are often automatically percieved this way, and especially for other
   language users, that may often not "get" the original obscure English
   meaning of the name to begin with.

   Examples: Nautilus
             Evolution
             Epiphany
             Totem
             Red Carpet
             Rhythmbox
             Zenity
             ...
             Word
             Excel
             Photoshop
             etc.

Of course there are always some corner cases, but these are at least the
types I try to classify names in.

So how about translation? I think one important aspect to consider is
that technical translation (as we do in translating software) is very
much different from translating literature. While literature translators
are given awards for being creative, permissive and "free" in their
translations, and also amuse or excite people, technical translation is
entirely the opposite. 

Technical translators do their job best by staying as close to the
original as possible in style, even when it means that the translation
will be dull or boring in some cases. Closeness to the original is key,
as bringing the message through with all its details is the most
important thing. The information must not be altered or skewed to mean
something else or even have the smallest danger of confusing users or
being misinterpreted by users. Any other goal is, and should be, far
below that one.


This style policy is very much applicable to the translation of names,
and the types of names explained above. Since the purpose of the first
category (descriptive names) is to be descriptive, and not so much for
identification, translating these should be encouraged, since that
improves the descriptiveness for users of the other language.

The primary purpose of the second category however isn't to describe the
function of an application, but instead be an unique identifier. Even
though the name may originally be a result of developers (or marketing
people) hyping their application by introducing a "cool" name for it,
the name usually serves an important purpose later on as being a
reference keyword in related documentation and user forums, and on the
web in general for information about and support for this application.

The documentation aspect is very relevant in GNOME, as we have far less
translations of our documentation than of the applications themselves.
Translating application names of the second category can thus be very
dangerous if the names in the docs aren't translated, and make the docs
much less useful or even useless.
Also, as much as we'd like it, GNOME is not an isolated island, and so
isn't our translations. We need to be consistent with the original
namings and translations that distributors and packagers use, and
sources for support, user forums, web sites and the whole lot. Thus, I
think anyone that seriously considers translating a name of the second
category above should make really sure that they are not actually
creating more problems to users than they aim to solve.

To sum my points up:
1) Translate descriptive names.
2) Do *not* translate branding names.

Of course there may be exceptions to this, but IMO they should be
strongly motivated. And so far I haven't heard any motivations that have
been strong enough.


Christian