[Usability]Re: usability and i18n

[Christian Rose <menthos menthos com>]

ons 2002-07-31 klockan 12.21 skrev Reinout van Schouwen:
> > It is hardly credible that a competent linguist, as indeed a translator must be,
> > would mistake a single word label on a UI tab as a verb. In any case, as I said
> > before, that's what the translation glossary is for.
> 
> In an ideal world, free software translators would all be competent
> linguists, with degrees and lots of experience. But the fact is that they
> more often than not are volunteers with a CS background. Despite their
> good intentions they don't always get it right. Without any difficulty I
> can point at numerous examples in Dutch GNOME translations where the
> noun/verb mistake is made (and that's just one of the many problems).

That's true. But on the other hand, even if not everything is looked up,
you can develop quite good skills on guessing what meaning was intended
even on ambigious words even as a volunteer, non-professional
translator, just based on the context. In my own experience, this solves
the overwhelming majority of occurences with ambigiousity. It's reasons
like this that we don't have computers translating everything just yet.
;-)


> Since the English language is full of ambiguities it would be unreasonable
> to expect UI designers not to use ambiguous words in the interface, that
> would even be impossible in practice. But ambiguity is a real problem in
> GNOME-i18n that should be taken into account, and not be dismissed with a
> remark like "they should just use the glossary".
> 
> End of rant, I hope something constructive will come out of it...

I doubt it. Rants usually aren't constructive. :-)

I usually report back potential improvements to original messages when
I'm translating, both so that translating becomes easier and/or the
original message will get clearer in my opinion. But since English is
not my first language, I respect the decisions and opinions of people
for which it is, especially when they are competent and knowledgeable
English linguists and writers like many are in the GDP. I also want the
originals to be improved, not just my own translations.


Cheers,
Christian