Re: Gnome2 User Guide: translate it!

[Clytie Siddall <clytie riverland net au>]

On 23/02/2006, at 5:09 AM, Danilo Åegan wrote:

> By the mighty Shaun, our fellow GDP leader, we present you Gnome2 User
> Guide in translatable PO files:
>
>   http://kvota.net/doc-l10n/by-modules.html#gnome2-user-guide

This is a great move! :D
> It measures a tiny 2452 strings, something a translator can do in a
> single afternoon.  Yeah, right :)

I don't know if the GUG is the same, but when I was trying to  
translate the Debian-Installer User Guide, I found the length of many  
of the strings intimidating and frustrating. PO format doesn't work  
very well for l-o-n-g, complex paragraphs.

Firstly, you struggle away for ages and end up with ... 3 strings  
completed.

Secondly, it's harder to find errors in l-o-n-g, complex paragraph  
strings.

I know we need cogent strings, but I'd be strongly in favour of  
splitting long or complex paragraph strings into sentence-strings, or  
at least shorter strings, if that worked for the text.

Linguistically, it should work, since a sentence is a complete  
statement of its own, but that will depend on the text. ;)

What do others think?

I must admit, I struggled through three or four of the _shorter_ DIUG  
files ... and haven't been back. The longer files just intimidate me.  
If their strings were broken up (correctly) more, I would take them on.

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