Re: Nice email sent to webmaster [Gnome 2.0 is truly excellent!]

[Christian Rose <menthos menthos com>]

mån 2002-12-02 klockan 17.35 skrev Pat Costello:
> The consistent, 
> regularly-updated GDSG, plus lots of interaction between writers and the 
> usability and developer teams is clearly paying dividends. 

I'd also like to thank the docs people, and the people responsible for
the GNOME glossary, for their work.

Consistent language and terminology in the UI helps the work of
translators a lot. Cryptic and badly written messages usually aren't
only cryptic to end users, but also often to the translators that are
supposed to translate these messages (remember that most GNOME
translators aren't native English speakers). Sometimes these bad
messages only cause the translator to have to spend some significant
amount of time on deciphering them, sometimes the result of the bad
wording only causes the translated result to be equally badly worded in
the other language but still correct content-wise, but in the worst case
the translator entirely misunderstands the message and translates it
into something that isn't what it's intended to say, which of course can
have devastating results for the end user of the localization.

Also, consistent terminology in the UI is helping translators a lot,
since we don't have to translate all possible ways of expressing the
same thing, but can concentrate on the standardized terminology. This
helps building translation databases and translation glossaries a lot,
and thus helps the whole process of translation. The GNOME glossary has
helped a lot here.

So good, clear and consistent English language and terminology is
important for translators and I18N as well. Let me thank you all for all
the work you've done so far.


Thanks,
Christian