Re: Word-a-Day: toggle

[Leonardo Fontenelle <leo fontenelle gmail com>]

Em Dom, 2008-04-13 às 09:10 +0100, Matthew Paul Thomas escreveu:
> I agree that "toggle" is a geeky word, but I don't think 
> translatability is a reason to avoid any word choice. Translators 
> should express the *ideas* in the best way they can, not try to 
> translate the exact words used in the English version. (Sometimes 
> another language may have a term or idiom that makes a sentence much 
> simpler than it is in the English version.)

I agree translating ideas is the Right Thing (tm), whenever possible
translators should not have to choose between translating words or
translating ideas.

When we translate user interfaces, we often get short, contextless
messages such as "toggle". Let's suppose somehow I know it's a verb.
"Alternar" is as geeky as "toggle", and even less clear. I would pick a
different verb, depending on what is been toggled, but I can't guess
what is been toggled. Worse: maybe there are different things been
toggled with this command, so even if I know which ones are they, I
won't be able to pick a good verb, so I'm back to "alternar".

Maybe "toggle" is easy to translate to some other language, but at last
for Portuguese (spoken by 230 million people and in most continents),
it's a bad word.


-- 
Leonardo Fontenelle
http://leonardof.org