Re: en_GB, gimp, and erasers

[Bastien Nocera <hadess hadess net>]

CC:'ing the other grammar nitpickers at gnome-uk, if you don't mind.

On Thu, 2006-03-16 at 09:45 -0500, Thomas Thurman wrote:
> Hi. I thought, now that I had shiny new CVS commit access, I should be 
> helping out with en_GB translation. So I went and did some work on the 
> Gimp's en_GB.po.
> 
> One thing I was confused about, though, was this:
> 
> #: ../app/paint/gimperaser.c:64 ../app/tools/gimperasertool.c:69
> msgid "Eraser"
> msgstr "Eraser"
> 
> When I was at school, we called them rubbers. I was about to change it 
> and then was struck by indecision. I did mention it on livejournal and 
> got quite a lot of response:
> 
> http://community.livejournal.com/linguaphiles/2347948.html
> 
> ...which was mainly divided between Americans saying "The Brits call it 
> *what*?", British people saying "Yeah, call it 'rubber'", and (fewer) 
> British people saying "Call it eraser because the US word is well-enough 
> known it'll make people laugh".
> 
> I'm still not sure which I should go for.

I did a little research on this, both asking people and looking online.
And though rubber was commonly quoted, most people also said eraser as
well when asked "What do you call that pink thing on the end of a pencil
that you use to remove something you've just written".

>From the OED (I didn't notice I had an account on there for months
through Uni...). That's for rubber:
"
d. A piece of rubber for erasing pencil or ink marks. Also used of
erasers made of other substances

1788-9 HOWARD New Royal Encycl., s.v. Caoutchouc, Very useful for
erasing the strokes of black lead pencils, and is popularly called
rubber, and lead-eater. 1891 Catal. & Price List (Waterlow & Sons Ltd.)
169 (caption) Artists' Rubber. Stationer's Rubber... Grey Vulcanised
Rubber. 1907 A. E. ZAPF Cycl. Drawing I. 14 In making drawings, but
little erasing should be necessary. However, in case this is necessary,
a soft rubber should be used. 1928 [see BUNGIE, BUNGY]. 1952 PRICE &
BISHOP Art School Self-Taught II. iii. 275 For erasing errors, a harder
rubber is needed. 1968 F. G. HOLLIDAY Man. Stationery v. 113 Erasers are
often called ʽrubbersʼ, but today a surprisingly small proportion of
them actually consists of rubber. 1973 M. AMIS Rachel Papers 139 Between
my finger and thumb I take a rubber and bounce it up and down on the
desk.
"

For eraser:
"
One who, or that which, erases; any instrument used to erase written
characters, blots, etc. Cf. ink-eraser.
"

The Cambridge has a bit more info on the UK/US splits, and says:
"
noun [C] (UK USUALLY rubber)
a small piece of rubber used to remove the marks made by a pencil:
If you draw or write in pencil you can always rub out your mistakes with
an eraser.
"

Given the possible derogatory nature of the word rubber, and the fact that
eraser is actually a better targetted word for this, I'd say to leave it as
"Eraser".

I'm sure the locals would have a stronger opinion one way or the other.

Cheers

-- 
Bastien Nocera <hadess hadess net>