[kde-doc-english]kspread (?)

[Éric Bischoff]

On Tuesday 07 May 2002 22:05, Pam R wrote:
> > I've changed it to:
> > "Or if you had a spreadsheet that modelled the greenhouse effect
> > accurately you could perhaps see the effect of a 50 percent reduction in
> > the amount of methane."
>
> To make such a change in the original english version of a document without
> any attempt to consult the author is both rude and arrogant.

Come on, Malcom is neither rude nor arrogant. He has thousands of fixes to do, 
and for such a small one like this one, he hasn't the time to always consult 
the original author.

Furthermore, you are subscribed to this list and *should* know that puns are 
banned. If there is some lack of respect in this affair, it's lack of respect 
towards translators in 50+ languages that will lose their hair while 
attempting to translate this sentence.

Not to speak about the lack of respect towards politicans that are not all 
just "hot air" producers, but for many of them feel concerned about their 
responsibilities. I cannot imagine the reaction of a politican wanting to 
promote KDE usage in his government and reading this irresponsible sentence 
(GNU/Linux is already adopted in Germany, Finland, Peru...) I think it is a 
very bad idea to make whichever category of people ennemies of KDE project.

> It might be excused if the document were no longer being actively
> maintained, but that is obviously not the case as I updated it in cvs less
> than 24 hours before you made your change.

Come on, how can Malcolm do some proofreading if he cannot modify anything 
without dozens of emails ?

> It might also be excused if the matter were extremely urgent, needing a
> reply in less than a day, but given the release schedule for Koffice that
> is not the case here.

Sorry, but people in the translation teams cannot always work in emergency at 
the last minute. Translating is a continuous and tedious effort.

Furthermore, the aggressive tone towards politicians made it even more an 
emergency.

> In passing, and just to be nasty <insert suitable smiley here> perhaps I
> should mention that the new version:
> ".. the effect of a 50 percent reduction in the amount of methane."
> does not make complete sense. What methane? Where? Produced by what?

Replace it with "carbonic dioxide then" (or whatever is correct for CO2 in 
English).

> Also, you have put an unneccessary space between 'methane.' and </para>
> into cvs.

Right. While we are speaking about details, such a space does not appear in 
the po files and does not make translation work more difficult. Unlike puns.