Re: How to translate new string in gnome-applets

[Clytie Siddall <clytie riverland net au>]

On 24/08/2006, at 10:07 AM, Thomas Thurman wrote:

> On 23/08/06, Daniel Nylander <info danielnylander se> wrote:
>
> Hi all,
>
> How should I translate the new string
>
> "Tomboy (ne Stickynotes)"
>
> in gnome-applets?
>
> "ne" is what? Not equal?
>
> Traditionally, in the UK and US, women have taken their husband's  
> name on marriage. When you want to tell people a woman's name and  
> have both her old and new names listed, you would write it like this:
>
>    Lucy Hall nee Auger
>
> where "nee" is the French word for "born", because that was the  
> name she was born with.
>
> This is an example of the same idea: they are saying that what is  
> now Tomboy was once Stickynotes. However, they appear to think that  
> Tomboy is male, so are using the masculine form of "nee", "ne".  
> (This is rather amusing, since in English a tomboy must necessarily  
> be female.)
>
> If the same concept doesn't exist in your language, you could treat  
> it as something like "Tomboy, formerly Stickynotes".
This issue actually came up in a previous l10n bug in Bugzilla. When  
consulted, the French translator didn't recognize "ne" without its  
accent, either. The question of software gender further complicated  
matters.

It would really be better to avoid uncommon usage in original  
strings. "formerly" or "previously" both sound good to me.

from Clytie (vi-VN, Vietnamese free-software translation team / nhóm  
Việt hóa phần mềm tự do)
http://groups-beta.google.com/group/vi-VN