ubuntu-manual team mailing list archive

[Jim Connett <jimandmarcy@xxxxxxxxx>]

Greetings, all!

I appreciate the discussions and the concerns about the username reflected
in screenshots, and I can understand the importance of making the manual as
usable and meaningful to as many languages as possible. It does seem,
however, that the discussion is getting mired in acceptable "name holders"
used in various languages, and to include the multitude of possibilities
across all translations of the manual would force the translation teams to
be involved in more than just "translating" the manual, which, too, has
already been mentioned in this thread.  And when the name has been changed,
we then would have to consider the language of the text in the
screenshots...and then the language in the text of the applications, which
most always are in English, and then, and then......

So not to be a Debby Downer (a common name used in English for someone who
changes the tone, tenor, or direction of a discussion or activity by what
they say or do), but I only see two solutions worth considering:

   - have screenshot teams in every language in which the manual is (or
   will be) translated capture language-specific screenshots to be included
   only in those translations.
   - place a disclaimer at the beginning of all manuals explaining that the
   screenshots included in all translations of the manual represent standard
   English conventions and that other languages and constructs may change the
   textual representation and/or layout of the what is actually seen locally
   on the user's computer.

I'm in favor of the latter.

On Fri, Aug 10, 2012 at 9:19 AM, Carsten Gerlach <daswaldhorn@xxxxxx> wrote:

> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> Hello,
>
> Am 10.08.2012 00:50, schrieb Patrick Dickey:
> > This isn't related to the username issue, per se (except maybe in
> > a general way). Do you have a name for "John Q. Public" in German?
> > In English, John Q. or John Q. Public is generally meant for "the
> > common man" or the public in general. Wikipedia suggests a few
> > names, but which one is generally used?
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Q._Public
>
> In Germany we would use "Otto Normalverbraucher" [1] for the typical
> ordinary German person. He is used for statistical and marketing
> research purposes...
>
> > How it's generally related to this, is since Ubuntu (and the
> > manual) are geared for the ordinary user, maybe that would be a
> > better username instead of the "John Doe", "Erika Mustermann"
> > options.
>
> ... but "Erika Mustermann" is used as a place holder name for example
> on the German identity card [2] or on forms [3]. I think Ubuntu and
> our manual is made for _all_ people and not only for the ordinary. So
> for the German version of our manual "Erika Mustermann" fits better as
> "Otto Normalverbraucher".
>
> I can't say what the best choice would be for the English version,
> this have to decide the native speakers. Then I would recommend to
> mention this name in the style guide.
>
>
> Greetings, Carsten
>
>
> [1] http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Normalverbraucher
> [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_identity_card
> [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Form_%28document%29
>
>
>
> - --
> Hier ist mein öffentlicher GPG-Schlüssel:
> http://daswaldhorn.piranho.de/gpg/
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> ijwAn2Tzo5IPWiYEbqg70dOHRwMdhhVb
> =m2Xk
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