Re: Limping on with GIMP

[Clytie Siddall <clytie riverland net au>]

On 13/09/2005, at 4:04 AM, Sven Neumann wrote:
> Clytie Siddall <clytie riverland net au> writes:
>
> > Yes, I've struck another string rich in ambiguity, although its
> > original purpose may well have been to provide information.
> >
> > #: ../app/tools/gimplevelstool.c:217
> > msgid "Load Levels"
> >
> > Now, does this mean, "Load the levels", or "These are levels about
> > loading"?
>
> It means "Load Levels from Disk". Are you actually doing the
> translation without having a look at the user interface? It shouldn't
> be too hard to open the Levels tool dialog and check where these
> strings are being used. If you don't do that, your translation will
> most probably be more confusing than helpful.

It's very difficult, since I'm not a Gnome user. However, I'm also  
the only active Vietnamese translator for this project, among others.  
My Gnome co-ordinator has been too busy to participate until  
recently, but just this last week he's been able to give me some  
feedback, which helps a lot.

So context is really needed.
> > <bangs her head on the keyboard again>
>
> What exactly are you trying to tell us by these remarks?

I'm expressing frustration. I managed to finish the gimp.po file last  
night, and will file some bugs today, including some strings which  
consisted of a single letter ... and no context.

I find strings like that really frustrating. I think, out of all the  
files I've translated for the TP, Gnome, Debian and various single- 
program projects, gimp.po has the least context, and thus makes my  
task the most difficult.

I'm going on to gimp-gap.po and gimp/po-plugins, which I hope will be  
better suited to the task.
> BTW, if someone wants to add some translator comments to the GIMP
> source code to reduce ambiguity of such strings, I'd very much welcome
> such an effort and would take care of applying such a patch as fast as
> possible.

Is this really our responsibility? I'm interested.

from Clytie (vi-VN, Vietnamese free-software translation team / nhÃm  
Viát hÃa phán mám tá do)
http://groups-beta.google.com/group/vi-VN