Re: [Usability] Gnome Volume Manager

[Reinout van Schouwen <reinout cs vu nl>]

Hi Sean,

It looks like you inadvertently replied to me personally instead of the 
list, so I'll quote you verbatim, hope you don't mind:

On Sat, 4 Sep 2004, Sean Middleditch wrote:

> And if we picked a different English word that would somehow make it
> easier to find a word in other languages that means the same thing as
> volume?  I'll admit I'm 100% ignorant when it comes to translations, so
> I'm curious what the actual problem is.  If we started using the
> unambiguous name "GNOME Manager of Things Which You Store Data On" that
> would make translation easier?  What do all of the other operating
> systems and utilities use for "volume" in translation?

The actual problem is, in Dutch at least, that no single word exists 
that covers the meaning of 'volume' used in a disk/storage context. 
Which leaves us with a few choices:

1. Pick a word with a very close meaning. Something like 'schijf' which 
is also the translation of 'disc'. This translation is not very 
appropriate when you can have more than one volume on a physical disc. 
It also doesn't really cover network volumes.
2. Treat as jargon, leave untranslated. The problem with this is that 
in Dutch the word volume is known to describe a measure of content, and 
is known to describe sound strength, but nothing else, so this could be 
confusing.
3. Use an uncommon word that gets close to the source meaning. This is 
what we're going with for the time being. The word 'volumen' (with an n 
at the end) describes a book volume, like volume 2 of an encyclopedia. 
Although this word is not in the vocabulary of many Dutch speakers, we 
feel that it's safe to use because it refers to the same concept the 
English word 'volume' refers to and it doesn't have other, possibly 
confusing, meanings.

Option 3 was also the route taken for translation of 'serif'/'sans 
serif', by the way.

regards,

--
Reinout van Schouwen			student of Artifical Intelligence
email: reinout cs vu nl			mobile phone: +31-6-44360778