RE: Terminology translation

[Jorg Rathlev <joerg jrsoftware de>]

> > In general, to do easily translatable terminology you first have
> > to adhere to general usability principles in English. The word
> > should not be an abbreviation (I consider even "regexp" to be an
> > abbreviation), slang, confusing, but rather self-explaining and
> > unique. This is the most important thing.
> 
> 
> I really hate those, too. Sometimes i have to guess what a
> abbreviation means. This causes big head-aches!

I sometimes have problems in the other direction, when there are
multiple possibilities for a good abbreviation and you can't remember
which of them was used, like with "regexp" and "regex", which are both
quite common.


> Yeah, in German this also leads to very long unreadable words:
> GNOME-Anwendungsstart-Panel-Applet. As you can see we even have to
> add dashes.

Actually, you don't *have to* add dashes (look it up in the Duden if
you're interested). You *may* add them, but if you don't, there also
won't be any spaces. GNOMEAnwendungsstartkontrolltafelminianwendung
looks much better, don't you think? Hey, at least I translated "panel"
and "applet" ;)


Jorg