Re: Translations, GNOME and KDE

[Kjartan Maraas <kmaraas broadpark no>]

man, 05.01.2004 kl. 01.19 +0100, skrev Christian Rose:
> sn 2004-01-04 klockan 18.52 skrev Luis Villa:
> > > > 2-Reduce the pos to only UI visable strings, no normal user will take a
> > > > look at Debug strings and so speak with coders about which strings to
> > > > include on the pos and which not...
> > > 
> > > Possibly controversial, but not something I'll get into. ;-)
> > 
> > FWIW, I don't think this should be controversial at all. Coders who
> > don't know English are already in a deep hole, and debug string in a
> > foreign language reported to english-speaking hackers or (worse) into
> > bugzilla are of virtually no use. If it goes to console, it should never
> > be marked for translation (IMHO.)
> 
> I think this is controversial, because in my experience, people always
> have different opinions on what a "debug message" really is. Some
> developers consider a "debug message" to be a message that is just there
> for debugging purposes and would be incomprehensible to any other
> technical person that wouldn't have looked at the code in question,
> while some other developers consider "debug messages" to be any message
> of more technical nature that they believe "mom and pop" type of users
> wouldn't understand. These cases may be very different, and it's very
> unfortunate to lump them all together in the "debug message" category,
> at least for deciding whether to translate them or not.

Maybe we could have the maintainers add xgettext comments to those
strings so the translators themselves could decide whether they want to
translate them or not? Just a note to say that this only appears on the
console or in a log or whatever.

[snippage]

> In fact, I myself believe the success of Windows on workplaces all over
> the world to be in fact partly due to Microsoft translating all error
> messages everywhere (assuming it's a Microsoft supported language of
> course). Microsoft has realised that a key to getting software into
> businesses is low training costs and thus cheap personnel. That makes
> translation for everything a must, including stuff intended for admins
> and tech people, since people highly skilled in technical English often
> isn't easy to find, let alone at a low cost. Cheap personnel is to be
> taken from the general population, and if English skills of the general
> population leaves something to be desired, there's not much to do about
> it other than choosing software adopted to it, both in the user sense
> and in the admin sense, and all other senses possible aswell.
> 
> If maintainers are worried about getting useless bug reports, then they
> can use error codes, and still have the descriptive piece of the debug
> message be translated. And yes, I'm advocating the usability for users
> and admins over the convenience for developers, but that's just the way
> I am. ;-)
> 
FWIW I agree with Christian even though I tend to concentrate on the
strings shown in the GUI myself since I don't have the manpower to keep
my translations 100% up to date on my own.

Cheers
Kjartan