Re: Repetitive strings in many modules

[Chris Leonard <cjlhomeaddress gmail com>]

On Sun, Sep 16, 2012 at 12:31 PM, Gil Forcada <gforcada gnome org> wrote:

>> I am entirely in favor of filing i18n bugs to promote common-sense
>> string conventions when possible (Why have "Zoom in" and Zoom In" and
>> 'ZOOM IN" if you can possibly agree on one string), but even then it
>> is a matter of getting devs to agree on one convention.
>
> That's another issue that I would really like to see happening, someone
> stepping in and adding some cohesion/consistency to original strings. a
> GWOP/GHOPC would be really useful here. Anyone stepping in to do
> administrate it? :)

Can you define the acronyms GWOP/GHOPC?

I am generally interested in cross-project consistency.

First, there is the purpose of providing a user experience that
enhances package-to-package  "transferable skills" learning (as in
"Gee, I bet I know what 'Save' does, but I have no idea what this
'Preserve' / 'Retain' / 'Keep' item in the pull-down menu means).
Consistency of original string (and its translation) in common
pull-down menu items (in particular) is a desirable feature, not
always attainable, but worth working towards.

It is also a lot easier to look for consistency in translations if
there is consistency in the original en_US strings.  Subtle, but
essentially meaningless, variations in the original (e.g.
capitalization, punctuation on short strings, etc.) just makes those
larger-scale translation consistency analyses more complex.

Secondly, there are the hopefully obvious advantages to localizers in
making on-line translation memory efforts more useful (e.g. Amagama,
open-trans.eu, etc.), again it helps if the en_US strings have a
sensible consistency.

There will not always be a one-to-one match from an en_US string to a
term in a given language, context is obviously critical, but that is
why we have human translations, to include the critical element of
judgment.

The language universe of computer program UIs is somewhat more limited
than the full complexity of human language.  There are only so many
ways to describe the functions performed by a word processor or a
chess game.  Voluntarily adopted consistency in terms may seem to be
an overly ambitious goal, but I think even incremental progress is
worth achieving.

We should not even attempt to achieve the level of mandated
consistency seen in fields like medical encoding (HL7, MEDRA, ICD-10,
etc.), but as a professional user of those sorts of controlled
vocabularies and ontologies, there are elements those approaches to
knowledge representation that are worth emulating on a smaller scale.


cjl