On 12/18/06, Thomas Thurman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On 18/12/06, Wouter Bolsterlee <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > I was explicitly referring to Dutch here. Imperative style is just not > > friendly in Dutch, and it sounds a bit strange as well (all Dutch software > > uses infinitives instead of imperatives). > > I think it must vary a lot by language. Someone on LiveJournal told me that > in Swedish they use the passive voice for such instructions.
I can't say that I recognize that statement... Swedish uses imperative on all menu items and buttons, except for some old translations (like "File" menu => "Arkiv") that are nouns by convention (that's what they were mistakenly translated to in the early days of GUIs, and that's what people simply expect them to be today). Any more recent menu/button terms are all imperatives (like "Exit" => "Avsluta" and "Close" => "Stäng"). People that learn Swedish as a second language are often surprised at how "rude" the language actually is. We simply don't use polite expressions very much. The equivalent of "please" is used extremely rarely, almost reluctantly, and we all say the equivalent of "you" (German: "Du", French: "Tu") to everyone, even our bosses, and it's actually considered improper to use the more formal equivalent of "You" (German: "Sie", French: "Vous"). When translating software into Swedish, we actually spend a lot of time removing all extra politeness from the English phrases that would just be considered weird in Swedish (for example, "Please restart your computer" should just be translated into the equivalent of "Restart your computer" in Swedish). It would sound harsh and rude in English, but in Swedish the extra politeness would instead just sound weird, out of place, and cheesy... So the use of imperatives on menu items in Swedish software should not come as a surprise... Swedish-speaking people that learn English on the other hand, are forced to learn that they should add polite phrases everywhere in large amounts, just so as to not come out as being harsh and rude unintentionally. Christian _______________________________________________ gnome-i18n mailing list [email protected] http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-i18n
