List of thoughts for quality translation

[Abdulaziz Al-Arfaj <alarfaj0 at yahoo dot com>]

Salam all,

Through reviewing some of the Debian files I've come up with a few
idea/thoughts, some major and some trivial. I'm not adamant about any of this
stuff, I just decided to float them here to get feedback. Here they are:

1. I think its wrong to say بروتوكول HTTP. It should just be HTTP
because the word protocol is included in there.

2. We should pay attention to the quirks of English and know what things
_really_ mean and make decisions accordingly. For example, partition table
means "The table of partitions", not "The table of the partition". Therefore it
should be translated as جدول التّجزيئات and not جدول
التّجزئة

3. The word فحص means inspect, not check. I think check should be translated
as تفقّد

4. One of the toughest things about mastering the Arabic language is using
7uroof el-jar properly and knowing which one to use. When trying to translate
"boot record of the first drive" you might see "سجل الإقلاع
لأوّل قرص" and that might seem alright but its not. You will notice
that "سجل الإقلاع من أوّل قرص " sounds more natural.

5. "Unable to do so and so". This sentence could be translated as "لم
يمكن فعل كذا و كذا" but doesn't "تعذّر فعل كذا و
كذا" sound more natural/less stilted and awkward to you?

6. Fatal error means an error that makes it impossible to continue. خطأ
فادح does not convey this fully, and خطأ قاتل is too heavy for my
tastes :), any other suggestions?

7. Just because the English string has lots of commas doesn't mean we should
use the exact same number of them too. Commas are actually alien to the Arabic
language, but sometimes we have to use them. I say lets keep it to a minimum. I
should mention what I mentioned before. When listing things, in English you
say: A, B, C, and D but in Arabic we should never do that. It should be A and B
and C and D because thats the correct form.

8. Because of a bug in Kbabel we've been forced to insert hard wraps in our
strings so we can see all of them without having to scroll horizontally. Well,
the bug has been fixed so lets not do that anymore. If you see a hard wrap in
the English string don't put it in the translation unless you actually see a \n
in there.

9. Avoid harakat (except shaddas) unless absolutely necessary. They should only
be used to differentiate between two different words spelled the same way
(example: مراسِل and مراسِل).

10. I'm not sure how to pluralize تجزيء :) any ideas?

11. Configure is sometimes translated as تهيئة and sometimes as إعداد
with disturbing inconsistency. I'm not sure which to settle on, but prefer
إعداد.

All thoughts and comments on these ideas whether positive or negative are all
equally welcome :)

Abdulaziz,


		
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