Moin Helge!
Helge Kreutzmann schrieb am Sonntag, den 21. August 2005:
> The german translation team tries to provide good translations. When I
> translate, I now always check the translation using ispell, to avoid
> spelling mistakes and erroneous translation. Also I use this to
> proofread other peoples translation.
>
> Many authors simply neglect to translate many terms, they simply use
> the english one despite having a good german translation. A very
> common case is "file" which can be translated by "Akte" for the
> physical item or "Datei" for the virtual item. Now I was very
> unpleasently suprised, when ingerman accepted "File" (and Files).
>
> Please remove "File" and "Files" ASAP and prune other english terms
> (if available) from this file. If a user needs these terms, she can add
> them in her local directory.
This wouldn't be hard to realize, because all these terms are pooled
in a separate file named "compeng.txt". My only problem is, that I
can only partly follow your argumentation. I like the idea to use
German translations of technical terms instead of using the English
word (but only if there is a good German word for it), but is it
political correct to remove these words from ingerman? "File" isn't
spelled wrong in a German text and "File" is much better than "Datai"
(this is really a typo).
Now the question is, whether more users would prefer a strict
compeng-free dictionary or a dictionary which allows to use them. We
are talking here about 352 word roots with several affixes, so adding
them all to a local dictionary is quite painful, if they were accepted
before.
If you are the only one, who prefers the strict dictionary, it would
be easiest if you build your own ingerman package where compeng.txt is
removed from Makefile.
Alternatively we could think about another dictionary named
ingerman-strict or something like this. But if we do so, the next one
will ask for a dictionary where anglizismen.txt is removed
abkuerzungen.txt or abkuerz2.txt (containing abbreviations, but
abbreviations usually shouldn't be used in a good German text).
Another option would be to package only the source files and build the
ispell dictionary on installation time after asking the user via
debconf which parts of the dictionary he likes, but is it worth the
trouble (especially on multi user systems, where only the system
adminstrator can decide what parts of the package enter the
dictionary, which has to be used by all users)?
Björn Jacke added compeng.txt to the default German ispell dictionary
and to say the truth, I personally agree with him.
> To give you a good example: We did not translate the word
> "repository" initially, but then we discovered a good translation.
That's a good example. I personally don't know this good translation
and dict.leo.org didn't offer my a translation, which fits my needs as
a translation of "CVS repository". "CVS Speicher" sounds strange and
"CVS Behälter", "CVS Ablage", "CVS Verwahrort" aren't much better. So
I as a German writer will still use "CVS Repository" in my German
texts but if ispell doesn't provide "Repository" (ingerman currently
doesn't do so, I should add Repository to compeng.txt), I will add it
to my local dictionary as a consequence. This doesn't help me to find
a better German translation, it only increases the risk that I add
"Repositorie" (or some other spelling error) to my local dictionary.
> So initially some users might have added "repository" to their word
> list, but now it is obsolete there. If it is only in the local
> directory, then changes like this can be made quickly and
> painlessly.
But this doesn't help me find a better translation, so I will continue
to have "Repository" and "File" in my local dictionary. So where's
the benefit for the majority of people using ingerman?
I agree with you, that such an restricted dictionary may be useful for
translators and writers who try to avoid English computer terms, but
the majority of users of ingerman may see it in a different way and
won't like this restriction.
BTW: The official German spelling dictionary (Duden, 21st editon,
1996) mentions "File" as "<engl.> (EDV bestimmte Art von Datei)".
A short poll on #debian.de @ IRCnet showed, that a small majority
follows your proposal concerning "File". But if asked for other words
in compeng.txt (like "online", "Disk", "Mountpoint", "Website",
"Cookie",...) they didn't have a good German translation and
suggested to keep them in the dictionary. So I still have the problem
to decide which words to keep and which words to remove.
At the moment I tend to remove "File" from the dictionary but to keep
most of the other compeng.txt. But is this really what you want?
There are several composite words including "File" but I'm not sure
which of them have a good German translation and which are only
available in English...
Tschoeeee
Roland
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