Hello and a HUGE sorry for my really really late reply to this message. My life had a big change over the last few months and i've been a little "lost" in the emails. But here it is now.
---------- Mensagem reencaminhada ---------- From: ""Jože Klepec"" joze.klepec@siol.net To: Geany translations mailing list geany-i18n@uvena.de Date: Wed, 23 Jun 2010 23:51:52 +0200 Subject: Re: [Geany-i18n] Geany-i18n Digest, Vol 27, Issue 23 Na 21. 06. 2010 14:39, André Glória je pisal:
I'm very happy that someone else started translating this awkward text file.
Lol,
I lolrwotf?
Sorry but I do not (nor urbandictionary.com) understand your acronym. But I take this opportunity to clarify that I was laughing about your usage of "awkward" because that was exactly the same word that pop into my mind, when I first saw the geany.txt file.
i've read a little about reStructuredText from some quick tutorial I found
on the web and found it, not that hard to understand. For now, only the underlines are a little boring to get right...
Indeed, if so, paste a link kindly - is it under EULA or what? Or is it
locked? :)
I do searches on this site http://docutils.sourceforge.net/docs/user/rst/quickref.html
As the matter of fact, I stopped working on this file for now (since Thunderbird 3.0.5 project was finally done with my friends as the date, if you look for one). I even threw away all my work - as I thought it's worthless. Finally, I think that everyone should take into account that we have on Earth around 6700 natural languages (not to count esperanto and all alike).
You're quitting? :( Why? I can see the effort required for this but don't believe it to be meaningless.
Partially correct - temporarily leaving it at the sideway (I said: stopped working FOR NOW, that doesn't mean that it will done ad Calendas Graecas). And if I threw sth away, I threw away it as it was badly done. And, at last, but not least, you most likely you forgot the essence: this (Geany) is a volunteer project, I'm not forced into it and I live in free country (well, freedom can be talked about).
Hey, it seams you took this right to your chest. Yes I know that Geany is a volunteer project. Doesn't it help to try and motivate people? I was trying to do just that, because, at least for me, working alone is not a great motivational force... As for the free country...yeah, we can open another discussion ;).
So, we need to agree that essential part or survival guide in help must be left UNTRANSLATED (=in English?). Behind that Survival part/Quick guide (containing quick and very brief guide around menus, plugins and so forth), the it comes all about in your mothers, fathers or another spoken/written language. That's what I think about the help and what it should be like. :)
I disagree.
I do not. In programming, English is common language, some sort one of seven modern Latins (Arab, Chinese, English, Hindu, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian are top used languages in modern world I know), so there is a need to keep a part of documentation in it. It may be even more languages if we limit to number ten.
Ok, you make a point with the "in programming" statement . Surely any programmer understands some English. I agree to that.
It's obvious that the documentation (and even Geany itself) will hardly be
translated to the 6700 existing languages you refer. But that argument is also valid to Geany's interface...yet there are translations for it. IMHO, if a user sees that Geany is available in Portuguese (has an example) and he wants to use it in Portuguese, I doubt he will like to click a menu and start seeing things in English.
Correct, but most likely you forgot the essence: this is volunteer project. It feeds itself from power and work of ourselves. And to correct myself: of those 6700 languages, around 10 to 5% are extinct each year (UN official data, not just airpicked out of somewhere!). Most of those languages are small, with several thousands or some of them even counting less then ten speakers. So Geany won't be translated to all of them, no way! Because the big 7 will eat them in melting pot. And finally, they'll eat each other. :)
Once more, I'm not forgetting this is volunteer work. Sorry if I sound like I'm ordering you to do something, that not my intention. However, volunteer work has to have some kind of motivation. Either through internal (to the project) discussion, or by feedback from users. But this reflects only my opinion.
He may not even know any english...
This is true, but ... . If someone has finished gymnasium or university in Europe, this is a very sad fact (English is one of EU's official languages). Well, we can argue about that and tell stories, but brute fact is that you need really ought to know at least a bit of English if you are serious about using computers. Speaking any language of those mentionted 6700.
Truly agree with you and is in fact very sad to have PH.D level friends that can only say or understand a few English words. I also agree that people with some programming skills, or the ones that seriously use a computer do, in fact, know English. I mean, they must right?
So having the interface
Mostly the UI is useful as help itself and selfexplanatory and it should be in 90% to 95%. If UI is translated very good and thoroughly, then there is almost no need to translate docs. I suggest you that you debate over and over every word that you translate in UI and help suggestions with colleagues, on Portuguese localization lists, anywhere with anybody.
I've been learning just that, thank you. I use my own translations and check back with the English version, so I can tweak my own. I complement that also with translate.google.com suggestions, with http://mymemory.translated.net/and http://pt.en.open-tran.eu/suggest/ (when it works).
A useful suggestion might drop even from another translator, translating for another project or at the same project for another language team. I sometimes look at Croatian, Serbian, Macedonian, Czech, Russian, Slovak (also German, Swedish, ... bla asaxon) and some other translations (works at TB, Geany & other) to compare for "hints" and history if I feel unsure or nobody from Slovenia has no useful ideas.
Translators are very prone to borrow words between languages. So I suggest you to look in other Portuguese translations, Spanish and so on. You could even find something useful in Latin America, if you feel unsure. In the end, you may find help in French and similar translations.
and documentation
The translated documentation is for the "squeezers", for users who want the best of their program.
in Portuguese will help a lot. That said, I can't see why is there a need to not translate something...
I said urgent core help needs to be international. If you overvote
English users, that's fine with me. But I'll not agree that seleçao wins that game, no way. Of course they should beet English, anytime they meet.
I'm not trying to replace the English language, that's for sure. In fact I love the language. So, yes, the core help could be in English.
Out of curiosity is it hard to make F1 point to the correct help file
according to Geany's localization? (From a developer point of view)
No hard fun. From developers point of view, you only need to assign MenuitemID+LangID for each menuitem triplet("0000","en","File"; "0001","de","Datei";.... and so on and on) and process this in a switch, using LangID, seeking for MenuitemID in appropriate file. As the matter of fact, you already know language setting from locale setting, but this is not always true and completely correct setting as people may have installed OS in en_US, but use translated programs.
So you need to pick settings elsewhere - keyboard, for instance, is the most sure setting (you could have several keyboard settings installed, then you should accept system default setting and explain the essence of setting correct setting.
Or, you could select language (and fallback laguage) directly in Options (like most of KDE programs have such option). With this option, you do not select help language, but it would be nice to. This could be achieved by using remote help files or having installed multiple languages or by installing any help file by users choice (by providing URI).
For HTML/XML, you could even have the complete help in a single file (both could contain scripts).
Thanks for the clarification Jože.
Kind Regards, André