Hey Florian, great to have you! I’m a translator myself, was on the Ubuntu German translation team and translated a load of other projects.
On Thu, May 24, 2012 at 1:34 AM, Frank Karlitschek <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi Florian, > > > > On 23.05.2012, at 21:26, Florian Rüchel <[email protected]> > wrote: > >> Hello everyone, >> >> I am new on the ownCloud team and I wanted to start by translating stuff >> to German since it is my native language. >> >> I noticed Mirall was not at all translated so I wanted to start there. > > awesome. > > >> Two questions ocurred for me: >> The first being whether we should talk to people in the formal "Sie" or >> the informal "Du" in German? As a third option one might consider two >> languages but that might also be a bit too much. >> For those of you not familiar with the distinction between the two >> salutations: You would a address your friends with "Du" and your >> business partners and strangers with "Sie", both meaning "you". >> >> My personal opinion on that topic is "Du", since I would see the service >> more targeted against private users (like in Dropbox) than business >> customers, but I am aware of the "Company support" option so I would >> like to have your opinion before I start translating the corresponding >> strings. > > > Currently the translation is using "Du". Today I had a meeting with a big > government organization in Germany than will use ownCloud in the future. They > complained that we use "Du" > So using "Sie" might be saver because it works for everybody. > But this is open for discussion of course. > This is a discussion in most high-profile projects. I generally am for »Du« because it is more friendly, and lots of projects do it like that for this reason. When translating, I usually formulate it so the usage of either is avoided. This also makes for shorter and more understandable translations. > >> The second issue is mostly a question of length and the degree to what >> you want to translate ownCloud: >> A good example might be "Sync". This is the short version of >> "Synchronisation" and in German it would have the same lengthy string. I >> am not a 100% sure now whether it wouldn't sound kinda wrong to say >> "Sync" in German. On the one hand its completely analogous to do it, on >> the other hand it sounds wrong (you could shortend it as a verb >> translating "to sync sth." to "etw. syncen" but this would mix German >> and English here). >> So two issues appear here: If a use the full length, then the buttons >> are surely too short so either they get bigger (wasting space) or the >> text gets truncated (looking stupid / impossible to read). The other >> issue is how much you want to translate and if you are comfortable if a >> certain amount of words is being kept in English as it is commonly used >> at least among the younger generations already. > > I´m actually a big fan of keeping english term that are just common in > German. Sync is on of it in my opinion. Sometimes it sounds stupid and the > text get very long if you try to find a german word for every special term > that´s used. > Some Projects translate »Synchronization« as »Abgleich« – but as the German word »Synchronisation« is basically the same, »Sync« is not even an exception. »Syncen« is also fine. > :-) > > >> >> Looking forward to your answers, >> Cheers >> Florian > > > Cheers > Frank > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > Owncloud mailing list > [email protected] > https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/owncloud _______________________________________________ Owncloud mailing list [email protected] https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/owncloud
