When internationalization can be confusing
Posted: Tue Nov 29, 2016 4:55 pm
Hi,
the work done on adding support for locally spoken languages is much appreciated. Still, that's also a source of oddities that can become time consuming, see below. Short question: What sources do you use for national languages, and is everything that was translated also covered by the various translation.xml files? How could I fix things locally, or contribute suggestions?
Using oXygen XML Editor requires that I perform several ad-hoc translations myself, back and forth: first, read the help text in English, or remember XML vocabulary. That tends to be English, too. Then, try to guess what the technical terms might be in the local language, and then, finally, see if I can find the guess in the UI. When no official translations have been used for oXygen, or for XML terms, or when speakers of a national language will typically use the original technical term, i.e. English, then finding anything the UI becomes difficult. (I do know I could switch the UI to English. Technically.)
One puzzling example that I have seen is this: "Verbosity" of messages generated when resolving via XML catalogs. The current (18.1) translation of "Verbosity" here is confusingly given as "Wortarten" (DE). This is actually the plural of "kind of word". When verbosity of the resolver/parser is meant, "kinds of words" would be a misnomer, too:
the context being Options > XML > XML Catalog. Other examples need less thinking, but the overload (both senses) is present.
(If you can influence the translation of "verbosity", copying from one actual option, viz. "all messages", is perhaps good enough, but again, IANATranslator.)
the work done on adding support for locally spoken languages is much appreciated. Still, that's also a source of oddities that can become time consuming, see below. Short question: What sources do you use for national languages, and is everything that was translated also covered by the various translation.xml files? How could I fix things locally, or contribute suggestions?
Using oXygen XML Editor requires that I perform several ad-hoc translations myself, back and forth: first, read the help text in English, or remember XML vocabulary. That tends to be English, too. Then, try to guess what the technical terms might be in the local language, and then, finally, see if I can find the guess in the UI. When no official translations have been used for oXygen, or for XML terms, or when speakers of a national language will typically use the original technical term, i.e. English, then finding anything the UI becomes difficult. (I do know I could switch the UI to English. Technically.)
One puzzling example that I have seen is this: "Verbosity" of messages generated when resolving via XML catalogs. The current (18.1) translation of "Verbosity" here is confusingly given as "Wortarten" (DE). This is actually the plural of "kind of word". When verbosity of the resolver/parser is meant, "kinds of words" would be a misnomer, too:
Code: Select all
Kinds of Words: () None () Unresolved Entities () All Messages
(If you can influence the translation of "verbosity", copying from one actual option, viz. "all messages", is perhaps good enough, but again, IANATranslator.)