Re: [gnome-cy] sut mae rhestr

[Dafydd Harries <daf parnassus ath cx>]

On Tue, Sep 23, 2003 at 10:11:12AM +0100, Telsa Gwynne wrote:
> And a dictionary can help a lot. We have quite a collection between
> us so there are occasional "what would people use for...?" conversations
> on IRC where Dafydd is frowning at the GyA, I am quoting from the
> Termiadur, Bryn is looking at his (which I forget) and someone else 
> is saying "Well, KDE is using..."

And Sioned will contradict us all...

> Also, when we were frantically chasing the deadline, I did do some
> amateur attempts at translating all the easy messages in a file.
> However, I did send them to Daf or Chris or someone for checking
> first. Whilst I was quite chuffed with the results, it was a very
> good job I didn't commit any of them: there were mistakes in all
> of them. I hate bad strings in English, so I am glad I didn't
> commit them in Welsh.

Unfortunately, translating is difficult. I don't want to be elitist
about this, but as some will no doubt have noticed, I am picky about
translations. That's not to say that people can't have a go, but it is
to say that I will change people's translations according to my whims.
:) (I am subject to persuasion, though.)

Anybody is welcome to pick up a component that hasn't been translated
yet and send it to me. I try and check things, but lots of errors do get
by me. (There are some glaring errors in the 2.4.0 release, some of
which I haven't gotten round to fixing yet.) And I have a backlog of
things I haven't checked.

It's certainly feasible for somebody with a little knowledge of Welsh, a
dictionary and patience and free time to take an untranslated component
and produce a reasonable first-pass translation. We are always happy to
help with the harder messages.

> > I'm currently working for Ceredigion County Council as a DBA/Developer 
> > but have recently applied for a job at the National Library of Wales 
> > on a welsh portal project (bilingual), so I guess this ties in with 
> > that possibility too :) 

Are you aware that one of gnome-cy's most prodigious translators, Bryn
Salisbury, is already employed at the Library?

> We also sorely need people just to run the thing in Welsh and note
> bits that don't make sense, that are in English (shouldn't be any,
> but..), where keybindings are blatently missing from the menu entry
> and should be there, and so on. 

Yes, users are good! If you aren't using it already, try giving it a go
- and if you do, please tell us your thoughts. There are certainly
errors waiting to be found.

> Finally, re-reading, I notice "or a lexicon" and it reminded me
> of one other thing. We started out with a list of words we intended
> to use whenever certain words in English came up. This list,
> though, changed over time. I think there are at least four ways
> to refer to bookmarks, for example. And I'll bet we have more than
> one of them in Gnome. Finding the multiple words being used for
> the same English word is going to take time, and we shall need
> help with that, too. Dafydd (Harries -- there is more than one
> Dafydd on this list) has started a more up-to-date list than
> the one we began with. Every so often, someone convinces the
> others that we should change word, too. We did this with "Preferences",
> for example. And finding and fixing all occurrences of it is
> something else that takes time. The more the merrier. 

I tried to resolve the bookmarks thing - if I missed some, please let me
know. Some of the consistency checking can be automated, but only some
of it.

Some help with the glossary would be appreciated - and this is something
that somebody new to Welsh might be good at, because things will be
fresh for them.

The original glossary is available here:

	http://muse.19inch.net/~daf/gnome-cy/glossary.html

(This version is a hack I did to convert the original PO file into
something resembling HTML.)

It was developed before we did much actual translation. The list of
English terms came from somewhere or other. Many of the translations
were guesses. The glossary wasn't used much in the actual translation,
but it was useful in that it generated discussion and provoked some
thought. Many of the terms in there are not really relevant.

The new glossary is available here:

	http://muse.19inch.net/~daf/gnome-cy/geirfa.html

This is something I have started. It is much smaller, but it reflects
the terms used in the actual translations much more accurately. It was
intended as a reference for translators, and, perhaps, users. Terms were
added to it as they occurred to me.

I haven't really publicised the new glossary much yet. So let me do that
now. It should be considered the canonical list of terms to be used in
translating GNOME. If you disagree with it, please make your case for
changing whatever you don't like about it. Anybody doing translation,
this means you! Stick to it, or complain. Consider this a request for
comments.

What perhaps should be done is

 1. take the old glossary
 2. remove the terms already in the new glossary
	- should be fairly straightforward
 3. remove the terms that aren't actually relevant
	- this requires knowing which terms are relevant. I'm not sure
	  how difficult that is
 4. update the Welsh terms to reflect the ones in use
	- requires knowing what they are
 5. convert it into the (ad-hoc XML) format used in the new glossary
	- this can probably be automated with some Perl
 6. add comments
 	- these include things like explanations, cross-references to
	  related terms, web pages, and emails on the list, and notes of
	  which terms /not/ to use. This was because people kept using
	  terms I didn't like, and I wanted to make sure that people
	  knew that I didn't like them. :)
 7. merge the result with the existing new glossary
 	- this too can probably be automated with some XSLT

Basically, to extend the new glossary with relevant terms in the old
one, except with updated translations and added comments.

The old glossary is available here:

	http://muse.19inch.net/~daf/gnome-cy/glossary-20030317.po

(The filename belies its age.)

To whoever who might be thinking of taking this on: doing this would be
very beneficial to the project, and I suspect that if you aren't
familiar with the terminology before you start, you will be by the time
you're finished. Even doing some of it would be helpful. I am happy to
answer any questions you might have. In particular, I am happy to do
steps 5 and 7 myself.

> Telsa (subject to correction :))

No corrections here! Diolch, Telsa.

-- 
Dafydd

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