Re: Orca Translation questions

[Willie Walker <William Walker Sun COM>]

> the untranslated strings of Orca to German. To translate Orca doesn't
> seem as easy as translating other application since it is not just a GUI
> application. Some strings are obviously intended to be spoken and not
> displayed on the string - that's at least what I guess. 

You are absolutely correct.  Some translations are for speech and others 
are for braille.  There's only a few that actually find their way into a 
GUI.

> My first question is quite simple: does Orca support speech output in
> other languages than English? Does Orca speak German? I think this
> question is essential for translating Orca. I currently use Ubuntu Edgy
> and on my system Orca is completely in English; not even the GUI is
> translated to German. Therefore I haven't found out if there is a way to
> use Orca in German. Right now I have the impression that Orca speaks
> only English but I may be wrong.

Orca relies upon underlying speech synthesis engines to speak the 
language of the user.  We have German users of Orca, but I'm not sure if 
they are using German or English speech synthesis.  We also have Spanish 
users, and I know they use Orca effectively in Spanish (I witnessed it 
first hand at Software Libre this month :-)).  I recall users from other 
locales reporting success in their native language, but I cannot 
remember the specifics.

> (1) There are some strings from ../src/orca/orca_gui_prefs.py like
> »Mod.Mask 2« or »Use Mod.2«. I am not sure if these strings should be
> translated or if there are just technical constants or handles.

We just had a discussion about this, and we agree these should be 
removed.  My apologies!

> (2) The strings from ../src/orca/phonnames.py obviously represent a
> phonetic alphabet. In Germany a different phonetic alphabet is used than
> in English or on an international level. For example in Germany we don't
> use »Mike« or »Quebec« but »Martha« and »Quelle«. Should these strings
> translated according to the German phonetic alphabet?

Please do!  In addition, we need some advice for how to handle 
additional characters/strings that might be in the German phonetic 
alphabet and not in the American phonetic alphabet.

> (4) The strings of ../src/orca/pronunciation_dict.py are pronunciations
> of typical English abbreviations. For most of these abbreviations there
> are no German equivalent but some of them are also used by Germans - at
> least in chats etc. Maybe it is possible to translate some of the
> strings like »as soon as possible« but since these strings are just
> pronunciations of English abbreviations it could be more consistant to
> leave all strings in German.

What you believe to be the best thing is probably the best thing.  :-) 
In the file, the strings on the left (e.g., "ASAP") are the 
abbreviations and the strings on the right are the 'human' way to 
pronounce the abbreviation.

> Excuse me for posting all these questions here on the list. I hope they
> don't sound to silly but I really appreciate if you can answer some of
> them. Finally I would like to mention that I really have very deep
> respect for your work on Orca.

Not silly at all.  Andre Klapper gave us a good (well deserved) bashing 
on the head today regarding our i18n/l10n issues in the Orca code. 
We're going to do our best to get those taken care of very early in the 
GNOME 2.19 cycle.

We Orca folks also have great respect for the work you translators do. 
Great job, and thanks for all of your volunteer work!

Will