Subject: Translation woes and typos
From: Tim Allen (rita_tim@tpg.com.au)
Date: Tue Jun 13 2000 - 06:34:30 CDT
I'm trying to get the Indonesian translation up to date. Hopefully before
Bob closes CVS again for the release... I've noticed some oddities in the
GoTo dialog. The explanatory text in that dialog, apart from being rather
large for a dialog (IMHO), has a couple of typos. If I was certain that
I knew what was correct, I'd just send patches, but I'm not, so I'll
just whinge about it :-). The current text is:
DLG_Goto_Label_Help="Choose your target in the left side. If you want
to use the "Go To" button, just fill the Number Entry with the
desired number. You can use + and - to perform relative movement. I.e.,
if you write "+2" and you select "Line", the "Go
To" will go 4 lines below your currect position."
I presume that "4" should be a 2, ie if you type +2 then you go down 2
lines. It'd be a weird interface if typing +2 moved you down 4; I have
tried it out, and it does behave as you would expect, rather than as the
dialog tells you it does. So I'm translating it as 2 lines, not four. Also
I presume that "currect" should be "current".
A trickier problem I have is in translating "INS" and "OVR". The problem
here is that I first have to translate the words "insert" and
"overstrike", and then choose an abbreviation of those two words that is
completely obvious to any computer-literate Indonesian (or, preferably, to
any Indonesian church secretary :-). Though maybe mosque secretary, or
even Dharma Wanita secretary, is more appropriate :-)). The abbreviation
has to be so obvious that from those three (or so) letters you immediately
know what the word is.
So, an appeal to translators of other languages, how did you resolve this?
A quick survey reveals that the Italian translation just uses "INS" and
"OVR", while the German attempts a translation as "EINFG" and "UBER",
while French is not yet complete enough to include this (which is
a pity, because that's the only other language I might have a
hope of understanding :-)). Haven't checked other languages.
And also, an appeal to any Indonesians or other Indonesian-literate people
on the list, can you suggest a good way to translate and abbreviate INS
and OVR in Indonesian? Gimana, ya? Bingung nih...
By the way, for now I'll probably just go with leaving them untranslated,
but I'm not happy with that in the long term.
Tim
-- ----------------------------------------------------------- Tim Allen http://www4.tpg.com.au/users/rita_tim/ tim@proximity.com.au rita_tim@tpg.com.au
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