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Re: Language Guidelines

 

Well in your case of

"You don't have any music" as compared to "BeatBox can't find your music"


you£d still have the problem because in some languages even the your is
possible in formal and informal forms, in German it'd be "ihre" und
"deine", but yes I agree that it's a Language specific thing, thanks for
all this input ;)

On Thu, Dec 1, 2011 at 6:59 PM, Daniel Foré <daniel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Hmm, I'd say typically we should avoid referencing the user directly and
> state things in the third person. One example is "You don't have any music"
> as compared to "BeatBox can't find your music". In this case, we circumvent
> formal and informal cases of "You" by putting the focus (and the "blame")
> on the software.
>
> But yes, in general we've been talking about more extensive guidelines for
> language in our apps and our docs.
>
> Best Regards,
> Daniel Foré
>
> www.elementaryos.org
>
> On Dec 1, 2011, at 9:34 AM, Christian Dywan <christian@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
> wrote:
>
> > Am 01.12.2011 18:17, schrieb David Gomes:
> >> I said "use formal German, it's more professional", but perhaps we
> >> need more specific language guidelines.
> >>
> >> What do you think?
> >
> > The topic is very language specific. To me it doesn't make sense to
> define at the level of the platform. Language teams should handle it.
> >
> > Consider that German has syntactically analogous words for "you" and
> "though" as French. But for example in email context you don't use the
> formal pronouns in the same context. Now think of Japanese or Korean which
> have even more fine-grained semantics.
> >
> > Another point is that if you actually wanted to define use of formality,
> you'd have to review and replace localizations in all packages shipped.
> >
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-- 
<http://elementaryos.org/>*Fabian Thoma* | *Council Member*
elementary OS
fabian@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx / elementaryos.org

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