Op 31-01-07 15:22, Robert Michel schreef:
Salve Engin!
On Wed, 31 Jan 2007, Engin Erenturk wrote:
In my opinion the translations must be done professionally for such a product
like this. Instead of volunteers who are not professionals, volunteers who are
professionals and volunteer who can provide a professional translation must
localize this product. I localized RSSOwl into Turkish, and I gathered 3 of my
friends and discussed every one of the phrases translated. But in the end it is
not like a professional translation. It's very important to give the same
meaning of the sentence in the localized language instead of pure translation.
Sometimes it is very hard to do such a thing. The best example is the Microsoft
products, even I don't support or like them, they did great job in
localization... They got a big book of meanings of words/phrases which are used
in Microsoft products, books etc. If someone wants to do a translation for the
books etc. they gave this didctionary to them to use it as reference
dictionary... As I said if there are volunteers who are
professionsals and who can localize it with professionals must be found...
I'll try to get in touch with a professional translator who is experienced in
technical translations if there is a need for Turkish localization.
I would like to disagre. Open translation has the big
advantage that people could give feedback about the
translations - many opensource projects include the
wikipedia are working without the support of professional
translators.
Getting in touch with professional translators would help
in some rar cases of doubts/dispute. IMHO more important
is that the people who translate does know what the software
device do at that moment.
Hi Rob,
First, as Engin already wrote in another response I think, "open" and
"professional" are not opposites. His suggestion is, if I understood
him correctly, to find volunteers who are already software translators
professionally.
Also, yes you are correct that "many opensource projects [...] are
working without the support of professional translators."
And it shows.
I absolutely do not intend any disrespect with that-- I'm really very
grateful to the people (volunteers mostly) who make OpenOffice, GNOME,
Evolution, Thunderbird, Firefox, etc. etc. available in Dutch on my home
Linux box, so that also my wife can use the system comfortably.
However, there definitely are many problems: inconsistencies between
applications, inconsistencies with Microsoft software (yes,
unfortunately this is important), different views of translators (most
keep the English "website", some translate it to the horrendous
neologism "webplek"), missing translations because the translation could
not keep up with new releases of the application, etc.
Such problems are minor, in the sense that they usually do not block
understanding of what is going on, what should I do next, etc. But they
make the experience less polished and more botched. And for a device
that we want in lots of non-developer hands, we need polish.
Translation is a thing that Microsoft does really well, as far as I've
seen. In my opinion, the officially-blessed-by-OpenMoko software feed
also should aim for a high level of translation quality, consistency,
and completeness.
So again, professional volunteers are welcome :-)
Groetjes,
<><
Marnix
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