[kde-doc-english]Re: Translating of jokes in programs.

[Thomas Diehl]

Am Freitag, 26. April 2002 13:04 schrieb Malcolm Hunter:
> > Am Freitag, 26. April 2002 10:30 schrieb Piotr Szymañski:
> > > How should we handle jokes in translations?
> > >
> > >From the perspective of the German team the answer is simple: We
> > > usually
> >
> > don't translate them at all. We are trying to give a technical, sober,
> > matter of fact overall impression of KDE and don't think that funny
> > stuff really belongs there. We also do not use personal strings
> > (programs saying
> >
> > "I" or "me"). Exceptions are possible, of course. Usually in games and,
> > maybe, in some edu programs. But this is strictly a German perspective.
> >
> > > I would like to know
> > > what is your view on this. Are there any directives/outlines from the
> > > kde-i18n coords?
> >
> > Since there wasn't a real consensus on "KDE style" beyond the draft at
> > http://i18n.kde.org/doc/content.html yet I don't think we should tell
> > try and tell the teams how to handle this. Esp. since user expectations
> > vary a
> >
> > lot between different countries and cultures. In the US for example the
> > style of many technical books is a lot more casual then in most
> > European countries. Things will differ again in African an Asian
> > environments. We should not try to level out our cultural differences.
>
> This is something I am working on. Please can you report these types of
> messages to kde-doc-english so the proof reading team can correct them.
>
> We want to avoid jokes, "I", "me", "my", etc. and emoticons (eg. :-) ).

I guess this is about documentation only? Or are you going after the GUI 
strings as well? ("Danger, Will Robinson!" is still there, although I think 
we really need that one as a warning example. ;-)

Which brings up the inevitable question: what is the status of the 
directory -> folder transition? Any chance that we are going to see this in 
3.1?

Thomas


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