Our translation structure makes it sometimes difficult to believe we are in a team, as many times we feel we are the only person translating a document.
But sometimes we need to agree on certain discussions to make a translation that has consistency along the different documents.
Some language teams have discussed and agreed to certain norms of style, or other rules on their language. For example the Spanish translators decided to use the informal treatment when talking to the users.
In this topic we can discuss new rules we would would like to agree on.
Please be patient, the forum is just starting and people may take a while to give their input.
Once we agree on a decision we can move it to the Tor L10n wiki
Even if we do not participate in translating Tor stuff?
I do participate in translating other things in life and I think itâs great to let language teams decide for many things, such as translating a technical term or not (like âTor bridgeâ that, when translated, sounds really weird in french), or gender issues in the language, for instance.
Well, I think this process may affect other software, as the Tor Project sometimes creates terminology that spills to other places, as bridges. So I guess this process should be inclusive of groups of translators that are not translating Tor Project software or websites directly.
But we must be careful to distinguish the difference between translation discussions and terminology discussions. We are not talking about changing the terminology, and translations should always maintain the meaning of the original term. If I translate âTor bridgeâ as âTor roadâ to Spanish, and you translate it as âTor highwayâ, at the end we will end up like the Babel tower without understanding each other
I was surely not talking about changing terminology, rather about choosing the right words in our language, and specifically when âbridgeâ can be translated to âpontâ but should be kept as âbridgeâ (ie. not translated).
Iâm not sure, but I know this was discussed a lot some years ago, that technical terms should not be translated as they have been chosen as words with another meaning than the original meaning (a tor bridge is not going over the river), and if we translate âbridgeâ we should also translate âtorâ (meh) and âfirefoxâ and all the things we keep original version because we donât know how to translate and they make no sense to translate.
Also, most of the community uses english, and itâs much easier to search for documentation when you already know the technical words, such as bridge, onion, guard node or whatever. If I knew âpontâ, âoignonâ, ânĹud de gardeâ, it would be much harder!
On the other hand, I donât know why english is always chosen as the default and iâm not sure i like it, but thatâs how it is. And I donât think french would be better suited at all.
adrian: I think this really depends on the language and the decision should be taken on a per-language basis. For greek for example, untransliterated strings look more or less okay (mostly because this is quite commonly and broadly used). But yes, language teams should be allowed to transliterate most stuff if it is appropriate (except for things like branding, searchability, etc, where IDK what the proper thing to do is)
gagz/French: the word bridges should stay in English and not be translated to âpontâ.
adrian: why? I think the word âbridgeâ and the mental image it creates of a bridge, helps users to understand what the Bridges option does.
