Re: More "what do you do with..?" questions

[Christian Rose <menthos menthos com>]

tis 2003-03-18 klockan 16.36 skrev Telsa Gwynne:
> applet

In Swedish, we translate this into the equivalent of "a panel
application" since it's much more descriptive. The word "applet" in the
Java sense is actually commonly used untranslated in Swedish, but in
GNOME "applet" is often used in plural form and using Swedish plural
form directly on this tends to get very ugly. That's part of why we
chose to go with the equivalent of "panel application" instead.


> GUI

Translated into the equivalent of "graphical user interface". Much
longer, but not at all as ambigious as an acronym of the translation
would be.


> VFS

Don't remember if I've encountered this, but would assume that it would
be just be the long equivalent of "virtual file system" in the same way.


> encapsulated postscript

We only translate the "encapsulated" part ("inbäddad"). Postscript is
treated as a name.


> metafile

I don't think I've encountered this yet. Would probably translate it
into "metafil" ("meta"->"meta", "file"->"fil").


> shell, sub-shell,

"Shell" in the computer sense actually has a more or less established
translation in Swedish, which is the same as the ordinary translation of
"shell" in Swedish: "skal".
The prefix "sub-" or "sub" is usually translated into the prefix
"under": "sub-shell" would become "underskal".


> sub-shell support; pixmap; widget? 

"pixmap" is exceptionally difficult to translate. It's a very hackish
term that doesn't have an established translation at all. Even more
problematic is that sometimes it seems to be used for referring to
computer images in general and sometimes only for certain types. Usually
we just translate it into the equivalent of "image".

The situation is similar with "widget", although it seems it's always
used with a very specific meaning there. We mostly accept the situation
as it is in this case and that this terminology is intended for
developers anyway, and use "widget" in this case in Swedish too. It
looks horrible in plural tense though.


> What do you with with killer app? It sounds like an assassin when
> I look at the words and imagine what it might mean if I didn't know.

Whenever I see "app" used in a message I file a bug in Bugzilla right
away anyway :) I can't think of any excuse for using the abbreviation
and not using "application" which isn't ambigious at all, and that
doesn't have the translation problems that the abbreviations usually do.


> I'm particularly interested in whether you distinguish between 
> directory and folder? How?

In Swedish, both have established translations (established in this
sense means used in the Swedish translations of both Windows and MacOS
and other environments):

"directory"	-> "katalog"
"folder"	-> "mapp"

This is also what Svenska datatermgruppen ("the Swedish group for
computer terminology", http://www.nada.kth.se/dataterm/) recommends.
They however allow for these translations to be interchanged, whereas we
in Swedish GNOME translations try to follow the style that the
application author chose. If the author chose the term "directory" in a
specific message we go with the translation of that in that message, and
vice versa.

Regarding Svenska datatermgruppen, it's quite a nice thing to have that
I understand that not many other languages have. It's basically a group
of Swedish linguists, computer experts and computer journalists that
together produce recommendations for Swedish translations of a lot of
general English computer terminology. Although what they produce is only
recommendations, they seem to have quite a lot of influence and their
recommendations often end up in the translations of Windows and MacOS
and other computer environments. On top of that, many of these
recommendations also after a while end up in ordinary Swedish
dictionaries.


> What about "vfolders"? 

I translate it into the equivalent of "virtual folders".
I would probably also file a bug report in Bugzilla for having it
changed into "virtual folders" in the original English message whenever
it occurs in a user-visible message. Even though "virtual folders"
doesn't explain the concept to the user more than "vfolders" do, I can't
imagine using "virtual folders" instead of "vfolders" being anything but
a tremendous help for non-geek types of users that don't automatically
guess right on what the "v" is for. So I'm all for having the "vfolders"
term nuked in all user-visible messages.


> Similarly there are reboot and restart; 

"booting" is complex terminology to translate. The association to real
physical boots isn't established in Swedish: hackish types of users tend
to use the unmodified English terminology ("booting"), and the rest tend
to just use the Swedish equivalent of "starting". That's also what we
use in Swedish GNOME translations, so "reboot" and "restart"
automatically become the same in Swedish translations.


> and the mess of words 
> to do with setting preferences: apply, submit, discard and so on.

These usually have more or less established translations in Swedish:
"verkställ", "skicka", "förkasta", and so on.


> But the directory/folder/vfolder one looks like it's going to 
> take thought so I am wondering what other people do with them.
> 
> Are you getting overlaps and overloaded words? I have heard that
> package and packet often end up translated as the same word, for
> example?

That's an interesting example. There's little to no difference at all
between the equivalents in Swedish. Here's what my dictionary suggests:

"package"	-> "packe", "bunt", "paket" (larger), "kolli",
		"bal", "förpackning" (wrapping)
"packet"	-> "paket" (smaller), "bunt",
		"paket" (computer networks)

However, since the size rarely matters in the computer sense as these
words need translations that can be used in a very general,
size-independant sense, using "paket" for everything is more than well
enough. I can imagine the situation being similar for other languages,
so this is probably a case where English is more fine-grained in it's
terminology use than other languages.


Christian