Re: first file to work on!

[Arafat Medini <lumina at silverpen dot de>]

> 1. There are words which have either completely
> stumped me, or I wasn't satisfied that suggestions
> made by kbabel were appropriate to the conext of an
> instant messenger like Gossip. Among these words:
> Smiley, Graphics, home (does it mean house? or home
> directory?), User ID etc... Any ideas?
> 
> 2. Some English sentences just don't make any sense or
> are grammatically incomplete. Sentences such as:"could
> not connect" & "contact not online". Should the
> translations to these sentences also be three-legged
> or do I have the right to write better sentences?

1&2) you have full right to alter any translation as kbabel makes a
"mechanical" translation and the app simply doesn't know what it writes
;) still when translating special words look at the online dics
available or, if you have, some written dics.
I'll check the file after you work on it and if something needs to be
changed I'll tell you.

> 3. This isn't a question, but there are English words
> that -when said- have no relation in meaning to the
> individual parts that form them. Words such as
> "startup", "online", "offline" etc... The words we
> currently use for them are rather stilted, unnatural,
> or uncreative (and this is my opinion as a user, not a
> translator). Are we allowed to try and coin new Arabic
> words for such English words?
> 
No, those words are already fixed by the group. So for eg.
startup is already fixed to "bad'i attashghil" in the whole gnome pos,
or online "muttasil" offline "ghair muttasil". In this case it's good to
make a list with these words and ask me I'll give you the translations
of them.

> 4. Should I try to stick as much as I can to
> word-for-word translation and to keeping the structure
> of the sentence intact? 
No you don't at all. You can change as long as you feel it's right.

> I noticed that some sentences
> which appear weak in English can become more natural
> and even more expressive in Arabic if their structure
> is changed a little. One example is:
> "Contact information for %s"
> I could translate this, keeping structure intact as:
> "ma3loomat al-murasil Li %s"
> or I could shorten it, making it more natural:
> "ma3loomat al-murasil %s"
> What is the project standard on this one?

This sentence is a bit tricky ;) in this case the "contact information"
as a whole defines information for the contacted person. There is a
meaning behind this,
for eg. you can write: information for the contact Mrx, but apps are
essentially interfaces which hold very precise information, in this case
the contact information as a whole is highlighted. That's slightly
different then information for contact Mrx.
In this case it means "this is information about everything related to
Mrx regarding the action of coming in contact with him"!!!
Which is different then :"information about the contacted" wich can mean
his hair style! or shoe number!!! you see?
So you can indeed alter BUT you have to be VERY careful in reading the
meaning of a sentence...

> For your benifit I have attached the file. If the work
> is satisfactory please commit it to CVS for me. If
> not, I'll be sure to remedy all the mistakes before
> continuing with the translation. Sorry for making this
> too long :)

No problem at all, I'll take a look and tell you what I think.

Yours
Arafat
> 
> Abdulaziz.
> 
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