ubuntu-l10n-bem team mailing list archive

[Greg Cunningham <greg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 20/09/2012 4:06 PM, goof@xxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> Members,
>
> I have some good news. The Bemba locale has been in glibc for a while 
> now and Bemba is now part of the language packs you can select after 
> you install any latest Ubuntu version. We have not translated a lot of 
> the installation strings and other important applications so you will 
> not see it at the time of installation. We have quite a while to go 
> for that.
>
> After a some months of translating a few strings and some guidance 
> from other language translators, it became apparent that the way I had 
> started to translate some strings was not going to work well.
> In that approach, I assumed that the computer was 'talking' to the 
> person using it. This meant the computer was given a position of a 
> 'child' when talking to the person. This meant everything that was 
> being echoed by the computer to the person was supposed to be done 
> with respect.
> Clearly that is not always possible. This also meant that even where 
> the computer was providing a mere message or an alert, it had to sound 
> polite.
>
> The alternative approach, which is used by the German and Hebrew 
> translation teams is to focus on the activity or action being 
> performed rather than by the players in the activity/action. For 
> example, 'Save' as in saving a file after an edit, before it would be 
> like: "Sungeni file". In the current form, we simply say "Ukusunga or 
> Ukusunga file". Much simpler as it is both gender and age neutral. 
> There will undoubtedly be situations were we cannot avoid this but 
> lets try hard to.
>
> So whenever you encounter a string where the English sense seems to 
> indicate its the person to do something, like: "Please insert disk 
> number 4", try and re-think it to focus on what it is that is required 
> to be done so that you DO NOT write :" Mukwai bikenimo disk ....". I 
> hope you get the sense of what I am trying to say.
>
> There are still some strings which I translated in the old format that 
> have made it into the latest Ubuntu distribution, but I am slowly 
> correcting them to reflect the new format. Please feel free to suggest 
> other ways of doing this if you have. Also remember to use Bemba-Lite 
> so that more users can relate to what we are talking about.
>
> Thanks
>
> Anthony
Thanks for the heads-up Anthony.  I'm way overdue for a catch-up with 
Lonnie, but she told me ages ago that the wasn't receiving any l10n-bem 
email.  Might have been that there wasn't any to get... If she isn't 
getting this, I'll investigate why.
--
Greg Cunningham