Re: UI Guidelines: Dialogs (2nd draft)

[Calum Benson <calum benson ireland sun com>]

Robin Jeffries wrote:

> The MS stylguide has an extensive table covering about 50 languages, I
> think.  The new edition of the Java Guidelines will also have such a
> table (but only for 9 languages).  This can easily include standard
> mnemonics (though those are sometimes situation specific).  It's a big
> help to make sure the same word is used everywhere, and it also
> improves the quality of the translations when people who know
> computers and know both languages can look over the translations and
> spot confusions.

The GNOME Documentation Project is currently working on translating a
several-thousand word glossary for GNOME user documentation (see
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome-doc-list/2001-January/msg00041.html)--
some of this could and should feed into a user interface glossary to
ensure consistency between the terminology used in docs and GUIs.

One of the eventual aims for such a project is machine-localisation of
user documentation (with proof-reading by humans, of course!)...  so
another advantage of sharing a glossary would be that you could localise
the GUIs at the same time... in theory  :o)

Cheeri,
Calum.

-- 
CALUM BENSON, Usability Engineer       Sun Microsystems Ireland
mailto:calum benson ireland sun com    Desktop Engineering Group
http://www.sun.ie                      +353 1 819 9771

Any opinions are personal and not necessarily those of Sun Microsystems