Re: Translation opinions

[Bastien Nocera <hadess hadess net>]

On Sat, 2006-09-09 at 17:12 +0100, David Lodge wrote:
> [To the moderator - I originally sent this from the wrong address, could  
> you cancel it?]
> 
> I've just been trying to catch up on some of the outstanding translation
> work for Gnome, and keep on coming up against difficult to work
> Americanisms, for example:
> "The preferred place to ellipsize the string, if the progress bar does not
> have enough room to display the entire string, if at all."
> 
> Every time I see the word "ellipsize" I get shivers - as it's not a word,
> just turning a noun into a verb. I could be lazy and turn this into
> "ellipsise", but this doesn't feel right with me.
> 
> So, the opinions I'm looking for are: should I be lazy and use a word
> that'll make people think "Huh?" or should I rephrase it like:
> "The preferred place to place an ellipsis into the string, if the progress
> bar does not have enough room to display the entire string, if at all."
> (Though to be honest I think I'd rephrase the whole sentence as it's
> rather clunky, to something more like)
> 
> Or, should I raise a bug about using a word that wouldn't be easily
> understood and let the maintainers fix the English?

I agree with Alex on that one. I would add that neither "ellipsise" nor
"ellipsize" are in the dictionary (the OED, Merriam-Webster, or the
Cambridge dictionary), so fixing the strings to remove non-existant,
computer neologisms would only be fair.

-- 
Bastien Nocera <hadess hadess net>