[Kde-i18n-fa] some problems

[Arash Zeini]

Hi Arash,

Thanks for your interesting email. Please read below for my comments.

On Monday 22 September 2003 02:30, Arash Partow wrote:

[...]

[...]

> A few months or so ago, I asked for people to give back their
> translations to
> a list of technical words, I only got 1 reply from someone who was not
> even doing translations, so from the 6-7 people who are ACTUALLY doing
> the translation nothing came of them. This means only 1 thing, they
> can't be stuffed debating their way of thinking until they have made an
> effort and checked something into the repository hence making another
> mountain to climb in order to make them change their mistakes once the
> initial debate over whether or not they made a mistake in the first
> place has been completed.

Sorry, if I missed this. But it is not clear to me what you exactly want. 
If you need a wordlist then you can "easily" extract this from our 
translation. If you want something else, could you please be a bit more 
specific?

> Put it this way, what will happen with FarsiKDE is going to be the same
> as what happened with the BSDs, people are not going to be happy with
> the way the project is going and will begin branching the CVS tree, at
> that point
> you loose all control over the project and also defragment efforts of
> people.
> The reason why I asked for people to give their list of words was cause
> I had
> installed FKDE and saw the translations with friends in fact I was
> installing
> it with some Iranian guys we were laughing our heads off at some of the
> translations, they were so bad and so funny, it was like the person
> translating was scratching their left ear with their right hand but
> going over
> the top of their head. It was that out-of-wack. But at the time I didn't
> want
> to say anything cause I wasn't actively contributing and I thought
> people in charge were going to organize the level and standards of
> translations a bit better.
>
> All the symptoms of BSD are there its just a matter of time for the awe
> of Persian KDE to wear off people's faces, then people will begin to
> realize what
> a mediocre attempt this was, they may then begin branching. One of the
> biggest
> problems facing OSS companies trying to internationalize their products
> is the
> quality of translations and back-translations. Something I think KDE
> hoped would be self governing when it came to them.
>
> Anywayz that was my 2 cents.

Well, you are right to some extend but you don't consider the circumstances 
we are living in, in Iran I mean!
First of all the quality of translations has been improved. KDE 3.2 should 
be better than the earlier versions, at least when it comes to 
consistency.
We have asked the government several times for funding, which has been 
rejected, even though in the newspapers support for FLOSS is announced on 
a "daily" basis. We need good translators who work on a long time 
commitment basis, so that quality can be guaranteed, but this is not 
available in Iran. The community of translators or FLOSS activists which 
the project can rely upon is very, very, very, very... small. We asked for 
funding so that we can have two translators on a regular basis, but fundig 
was rejected with the argument...

While translating we have used reference dictionaries. We have not invented 
any words, and it has been our policy to use words that are either 
approved by Farhangestan or are available from a reference dictionary. If 
you see the list of the Farhangestan approved words (available from 
www.amitis.org in the "Terminology" section) you are deemed to become 
depressive, but this is the reality we live in! Have you ever been to 
Farhangestan? I am more than happy to take you there once with me and let 
you be part of it!
And be sure that the word "cookie" sounded strange in English too, the 
first time a computer user saw it. The same applies to "Kolooche" that we 
use, but we think a bit fun - as long as it doesn't hurt and as long as it 
is justified - is OK.
But I agree with you that some translations are of poor quality when it 
comes to sentences. Even there I have experienced that when I use the 
English desktop and after a while switch to German, I either don't 
understand anything (I speak fluent German and claim it to be my second 
mother tongue) or have to laugh about the strings. Habit plays a big role 
here and it doesn't have anything to do with the languages themselves.

Believe me that we have thought about all these problems a lot and think 
that we have done the best under the circumstances. I do not see how you 
arrive at your conclusion 

But we are happy for a fruit- and thoughtful dialogue to see how we can 
further improve things.

Greetings,
Arash
-- 
The FarsiKDE Project
www.farsikde.org