On Thu, 2004-07-15 at 21:24, Munzir Taha wrote: > My previous experience in translations is turned to be fruitful to me. Many of > the things which I haven't been able to take a decision about have been clear > to me now. I want to share my experience here with you. > > I made my choices of what's the best way to handle many issues. I would like > to discuss these things here if you don't mind changing what have been stated > before if convinced. > There is no rulebook as to what is required to revert a QAC decision. Perhaps there should be one. I would think that you would have to convince everyone you are right to "change" a rule. Making a new one should be easier. > First, we agree together that QAC's role is to provide quality and consistent > translation, right? > It is to _assure_ quality, yes. > Consistency is the point I want to stress here. > > I will begin with acronyms. I am strongly in favor of leaving those as they > are without trying to type them in Arabic letters. KDE should never be As I am to the opposite. I am _extremely_ against what you are suggesting. > translated as كي دي إي nor as كيدي. ِA professional translator in our team, This "professional" is not a professional technical translator, is he? > has mentioned that official and certified translation deal with them > like this. He mentioned a lot of stuff regarding United Nations translation > standard (IIRC). Let's see this standard then. Someone "mentioning" something in a "by the way" is not good enough. Let us see a link to such a document. Keep in mind that the UN is _not_ a computer-based organization and their standards would naturally be different form one that is. > > I searched the web and found many projects points to this, e.g.: > http://translate.sourceforge.net/doc/translation-new-words > Yes and? It doesn't say much, it just says you can do x, y or z. > Transliteration will get the translators in problems regarding how is it > pronounced and also space-fitting issues. The first will carry a lot of No. I don't see that as an issue. One word comes up, brief discussion, agreement, it's written down and it no longer would be discussed. Well, that is, until a Munzir comes up and disagrees with what everyone agreed on again ;) > unnecessary discussion of what's the correct pronounciation and the lator > would force the translator to know the context and decide whether the space > allowed for the msgstr will suffice. Besides being difficult, it would cause Yes, it is up to the translator if they want to clarify the word or not. > inconsistency which is very bad and unprofessional. That would not cause inconsistency. I don't see how that would happen. > > Let's see to which extent we can agree together ;) Munzir, you are also confusing two issues. There is a difference between product names and other acronyms (like protocol names, etc.) In the first case, we say you MUST transliterate. However, in the case of a non-product/application names/abbreviations you are to transcribe. Please do review the QAC rules again. For example: HTTP would be transcribed as 'http' and not transliterated. A translator has the option of whether to explain what it is by providing a translated antonym between paranthesis (provided there is space -- depends on context) or can leave it as is. However, when it is a product name, it would be unacceptable to transcribe it. Regards -- ------------------------------------------------------- | Mohammed Elzubeir | Visit us at: | | | http://www.arabeyes.org/ | | Arabeyes Project | Homepage: | | Unix the 'right' way | http://elzubeir.fakkir.net/ | -------------------------------------------------------
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