Re: translator_credits

[Malcolm Tredinnick <malcolm commsecure com au>]

On Thu, 2004-01-08 at 14:54, Ramanan Selvaratnam wrote:
> On Sun, 2004-01-04 at 20:44, Sven Neumann wrote:
> > Hi,
> > 
> > > > translator_credits
> > 
> > this is the first time I hear about this but then I'm not a
> > translator. We recently added translator credits to The GIMP and since
> > we didn't know about this convention, we used a different string to
> > translate. I'd like to change it to "translator_credits" but we
> > usually don't include email addresses in the About dialog. Is this
> > string supposed to be used for anything else than the About dialog?
> > Can you give me some advice whether it would be a good idea for gimp
> > to use "translator_credits" (or "translator-credits" which I would
> > prefer)?
> 
> In case everyone missed this question... could some one answer this
> please.
> 
> For me, it will be helpful to know how to attract/answer translators
> when they inquire how visible their contributions will be... ie, anyone
> know any other application where the about dialog gives credit to
> translators?

Here is an attempt at a "stock answer" (i.e. something that might end up
in Christian's translation guide):

        The translation of the "translator_credit" string will appear
        under the Translator tab of the standard GNOME About box. This
        has the effect of showing the names of the people who translated
        the application in the currently active locale.

        Translators should add their own name to the translation of
        translator_credit (being careful not to remove any existing
        names, since they also deserve credit).
        
        The string is only used in the About box and although it is
        traditionally called "translator_credit", the exact string name
        is up to the application developers (for example, it may be
        "translator-credit" or something similar).

To answer Svens original questions: there is nothing special about the
name of the string because the GnomeAbout widget does not know anything
about it. Application developers need to test the translated value
themselves before deciding whether to pass _("translator_credit") or
NULL in the appropriate parameter to the gnome_about_box_new() function.

*However*, about boxes which are constructed using Glade will use
translator_credit and this should not be changed. This is because the
widget construction code in libglade which creates the About box knows
to look out for this string and not display a translators tab if the
string is untranslated.

What is not mentioned here is the format translators should use for
entering their name. This is because it appears to depend upon the
translation team. For example, Christian mentioned that the Swedish team
don't use email addresses for individuals, preferring the email to go to
the team address. Similarly, a Chinese or Japanese team might require
names to be both in Romanised and native character set.

Cheers,
Malcolm