Dear Kjell,
MY INITIAL REFLEXIONS ABOUT NAMING OF MATHEMATICAL FUNCTIONS • Some functions are translated while some are not. This makes it incoherent and give a sense of non-finished translation. I think that either all terms are translated, or nothing is translated. It adds to complexity if the user has to be aware where to use an english term or a translated term. • As a general rule, I think it is good to have as self explaning names as possibly on functions. If possibly, use names that are established in use on for example pocket calculators. • In Sweden we often use the english names for functions, and people are familiar with these terms. When trying to translate these terms for OpenOffice, sometimes it results in names that have not been used previously. This can be enriching for the Swedish language, but it can also add confusion to the users. Many times the translation will be longer becasue it must be self-explaining, because the users have not been exposed to these terms before. • See the links below for examples of names of mathematical functions in a SciLab and Mathlab. Two programs/tools for mathematical computations. I think these names are as self explaining as possible and are good examples of how to name functions. Also note that the functions are not translated between languages. French, Portugese, Russian and Chinese all use the same names. http://help.scilab.org/docs/5.4.1/en_US/index.html http://help.scilab.org/docs/5.4.1/fr_FR/section_36184e52ee88ad558380be4e92d3de21.html INITIAL REFLEXIONS ABOUT 'SUMIF' • I have never understood what the ending "S" stands for. It confuses me because I do not know if its part of the word, or if it is a suffix, adding some important meaning. Can one leave out the S, or put it behind a dot in order to make it more clear "SUMIF.S". • I have looked at translations of several languages of "SUM.IFS" and they are confusing at a first glance English SUMIFS - One could thing it means many IF by IFS, where 's' is a plural mark. But maybe S, represent 'set', 'set of conditions'? Danish SUM.HVIS German SUMMEWENNS Spanish SUMAR.SIS French SOMME.SI.ENS - I guess the EN in French represents 'ensemble' = 'set'. Norwegian Bokmål SUMMER.HVIS.SETT Swedish SUMMA.OMF - Can be interpreted as 'omforma' (OMForma) = 'transform'. Translation of 'set of conditions' would be 'mängd av villkor'. 'F' would mean 'fält' = 'field' to me. • SUMMER.HVIS.SETT confuses me. First I do not know why the "S" is not at the end like this: SUMMER.HVIS.ETT.S. Secondly I think it would be more clear to name it "SUM.TRUE" (in norweigan SUMMERA.SANT?). I do not understand the need of mentioning 'if one'. That is redundant, because if the condition is false, it is zero (and adding zero adds nothing). So it would be sufficient to say: SUM.S. • As I understand the function SUMIF, it gives the number of cells that answer TRUE to an question defined by the function call SUMIF. Therefore a more logic name would be SUM.TRUE or SUM.ONES (SUMMERA.ETTOR). The name SUM.IF does not give much clue to what one means; but if it called like for example SUMIF(cellvalue<13), then it is more or less selfexplaining. The functions name SUMIF on its own give little clue, but when its used it is easier to understand. As reasoned above, I think SUM would be sufficient to use. False returns zero. Summing all the true (1) answers and false (0) answers, is what the function does. • Finally I think that SUM.IF and AVERAGE.IF are okay as names because in usage it will be clear what it is about. I think they are called like this SUM.IF(cellvalue>10, cellvalue<20) AVERAGE.IF(cellvalue>10, cellvalue<20) I do not think that SUM.IF.TRUE or AVERAGE.IF.TRUE will add much to its understanding. It will also make the names longer. I do not think 'ONE' should be used, because we are evaluationg bolean expressions. /Stefan -----Original Message----- From: kjell <[email protected]> To: l10n <[email protected]> Sent: Mon, Oct 14, 2013 3:16 pm Subject: Specialised functions - conditional/alternate When translating functions, do we "follow the leader" and copy the translation of corresponding MS Excel functions, or do we agree on our own standard? The functions at hand now are the "multiple conditionals" summary functions, ending with "S" for "Set of conditions", and also the "compound character" functions which will distinguish multibyte characters, signified by the ending "B". MS uses a rather long translation in many cases, so the original "IFS" becomes ".HVIS.SETT" in the Norwegian translation. I prefer the compactness of the original functions, but I can see trouble looming ahead if we stray from the de facto standard. So we could have (like MS, original vs. Norwegian translation) ... SUMIFS translated to SUMMER.HVIS.SETT AVERAGEIFS translated to GJENNOMSNITT.HVIS.SETT etc. IOW, more than twice the length of function names. Actual functionality explicitly stated, but complex formulas will be harder to manage. I am unable to find Microsoft's translations for the "...B" text functions, but I envision some "....MULTIPLE.BYTE" construct... I would be grateful for factual info (actual translations for similar functions in other languages) as well as views on strategy (compact like the original, or elaborate names). Sincerely Kjell --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected] For additional commands, e-mail: [email protected]
