To: Documentation and Translation <doc at arabeyes dot org>
Subject: Re: Words
From: Gregg Reynolds <gar at arabink dot com>
Date: Mon, 10 Oct 2005 19:32:05 -0500
User-agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0.2 (Windows/20050317)
Chahibi Youssef wrote:
Please how do you translate these words ?
Community
GPL
GNU
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I would recommend that you transliterate GPL (جي/بي/أل؟) and GNU
(غنو/جنو/قنو؟) and then provide a gloss explaining the meaning. In my
experience you can't really "translate" acronyms very well from English
to Arabic.
In English one (or I at least) says "Gee Pee El" for GPL, and "gunoo"
for GNU ("g" as in "go").
GNU = Gnu's Not Unix. Check the website (http://www.gnu.org). I
believe they claim it is the world's first recursive acronym. I'm not
sure you can do that in Arabic. But there's no reason you can't invent
something, so long as it has the same meaning.
GPL = General Public Licence. Note that the full expression is "GNU
General Public License". GPL does not mean "GNU Public License".
That's actually kind of a tough one I never thought of before.
"General" and "Public" are both usually translated as "عامة", but I
don't think "الرخصة العامة العامة" really works very well. Maybe
"الرخصة العومية للعامة"? Or maybe الرخصة الحرة العامة captures the
spirit of it better.