Names are just names, in the English version too: for example,
"Impress" is not a word that an English speaker would immediately
associate to giving presentations.
I do not want to turn this into a heated debate. I'll just say a couple
of things that may raise our cultural awareness.
All names are embedded in some concrete culture. The names of the
applications are not just names, they are names in English both in terms
of their semantics (what they mean as English words), morphology (their
grammatical form), phonetics (their expected pronunciation).
In the Christian West, we've had the long tradition of Hebrew, Greek,
and Latin names spreading among different peoples, languages, and
cultures. The process was dynamic and pliant, the names were adapted to
the circumstances of a given culture. So what became "George" and
"Stephen" in English, turned into ""Jurgis" and "Steponas" in
Lithuanian. It is not just writing words differently. It is adapting
them to different systems of language, from Hebew to Lithuanian, from
German to Finnish. Two things were inherent in that tradition: 1) a
drive to universalize cultural behavior and 2) a respect for cultural
difference which was enacted by finding creative ways to harmonize the
universal with the particular.
That is not what is happening in our globalized world governed by the
capitalist drive to commodify and monetize. Things are viewed as
products. Products are given (for the most part) English names because
they will be sold on a global market the lingua franca of which happens
to be English. There is no cultural adaptation anymore as it used to be
in earlier historical periods. The product names are literally imposed
on native cultures "as is", i.e. as English.
Some of you who speak Romance or Germanic languages may not feel just
how much of an intrusion this Anglicizing tendency is to other languages
such as Lithuanian. How should we pronounce "Base" or "Calc" in
Lithuanian, a language that is phonetic (i.e. we write the way we speak,
and we speak the way we write)? How should we write these words in
Lithuanian, a language that is heavily declined and expects the root
words to be a certain way and not just any way (and English for
Lithuanian is pretty much "any way" ) Sure, we'll find ways out, we'll
bend the language to "accommodate," but this is the same kind of bending
a body assumes when pushed or squeezed by an external force it cannot
escape.
I don't think there is an easy solution. My suggestion in an earlier
e-mail was to exercise a mixture of common sense and cultural awareness.
We are all rooted in some culture. When we do something that affects
another culture the only way to really know what we're doing is to ask
that culture.
I do apologize for what may look like a rant. It is all said in good
will and peace.
Regards,
Aivaras
2014.06.28 16:18, Andrea Pescetti rašė:
On 21/06/2014 Pedro Albuquerque wrote:
[Aivaras[ how/where in the language files can I translate
the names of the applications (Base, Calc, Draw, Impress...) as they
occur in Windows > Start > Programs > OpenOffice 4.1.0?
I would prefer to see the opening screen (see attachment) with the
applications names NOT translated!
I don't know if we have translatable application names.
Pedro, your screenshot was not delivered; so I checked by installing a
Portuguese language pack; and there in the start screen I see
localized descriptions, see http://i.imgur.com/D1sqDMk.png (but this
does not mean that "Writer" is translated); but if I open a new
document I see "Writer" in the heading, see
http://i.imgur.com/BaFqPeJ.png ; everything seems OK to me.
Applying the same principle to Microsoft Office, we should see Ms
Acesso, or Ms Palavra or Ms Excelente, or ...
I'd suggest the names of the applications are NOT translated globally,
That's my same point of view. We don't translate "OpenOffice", since
that is our trademark. Internal application names have less stringent
requirements, but still it is good to keep consistency with names, and
use localized descriptions when needed.
Names are just names, in the English version too: for example,
"Impress" is not a word that an English speaker would immediately
associate to giving presentations.
Regards,
Andrea.
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