Re: Do "enabled", "disabled", and "not found" need to be qualified per instance?

[Jorge González González <aloriel gmail com>]

El sáb, 15-05-2010 a las 22:56 +0200, Petr Kovar escribió:
> Hi!
> 
> Joanmarie Diggs <joanmarie diggs gmail com>, Sat, 15 May 2010 15:18:41
> -0400:
> 
> > Hey all.
> > 
> > Silly question: Do "enabled", "disabled", and "not found" need to be
> > qualified per instance?
> > 
> > More context: Orca speaks and brailles various confirmation messages
> > when the user changes a setting on the fly or executes certain commands.
> > Examples:
> > 
> > User: enables/disables speech temporarily
> > Orca: "speech {enabled,disabled}
> > 
> > User: enables/disables indentation and justification info temporarily
> > Orca: "Speaking of indentation and justification {enabled,disabled}
> > 
> > User: Attempts to move to the next heading, but there isn't a next one
> > Orca: "No more headings found"
> > 
> > User: Attempts to move to the next list, but there isn't a next one
> > Orca: "No more lists found"
> > 
> > Etc., etc.
> > 
> > Some users like a lot of detail. But for experienced users and/or users
> > with really small braille displays, some of these strings are
> > unnecessarily long. Therefore, we're going to start providing optional,
> > brief messages.
> > 
> > User: enables/disables whatever by giving the command to do so
> > Orca: "{enabled,disabled}"
> > 
> > User: Attempts to move to the next whatever, but there isn't a next one
> > Orca: "not found"
> > 
> > Will the translation of "enabled", "disabled", and "not found" vary in
> > some languages depending on what was enabled, disabled, or not found?
> 
> Absolutely, since there exists something we call grammatical gender in many
> many languages:
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_gender
>  
> However, as long as those adjectives like "enabled" or "disabled" aren't
> incorporated into a sentence or sentence fragment, but are placed in a
> string of their own, it's often the case in i18n not to qualify per
> instance and respect various gender and declension forms, but to use
> a "general, one-gender, one-case" term that refers to all strings with the
> appropriate meaning. (In my West Slavic language [Czech], we often make use
> of the neuter gender singular nominative case for that purpose.)
> Nevertheless, I wouldn't count that in best i18n/l10n practices, really.
> 
> In the end, a context is what counts the most for translators. Also, I
> think that Orca is the excellent example of providing a good portion of
> useful context information to their translators, so thanks for that.
I would'n have said better, that's +1 for Spanish.

> 
> > Apologies for being a stereotypical, monolingual American. And thanks in
> > advance for your help!
> 
> Thanks for keeping i18n in mind. It's highly appreciated!
> 
> Regards,

Cheers.
> Petr Kovar
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-- 
Jorge González González <aloriel gmail com>
Weblog: http://aloriel.no-ip.org
Fotolog: http://www.flickr.com/photos/aloriel