Editing translations- incorporation of English
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We have found a translation in Hindi, a language we are somewhat familiar with, and am considering editing this language. However- and this is the reason for our need to edit it- a lot of the words, are written in hindi, but aren’t words of Hindi, instead just the corresponding English words written in that script. View is just the word “Vyoo” (Hindi is a phonetic language) instead of the actual corresponding Hindi translation.
In some cases, both English AND Hindi have been used.
The localization for cut and copy is just the word cut and copy written in devanagari. But the localization for undo and redo translates to “(action, do) as before” and “(action, do) again/once more,” respectively. (To be more clear, redo’s word translates more to “repeat” than “undo undo” but let’s be honest, so does “Redo” itself. We… we should probably do something about that.)
My question is whether, during editing, we are to remove all translations that are essentially just the english word in devanagari script in favour of fallback on English language, or whether we are to leave them as is.
I prefer the former, because there is no point having a hindi translation if it’s the same thing as English but in a different script.
However, what is the convention for these sort of things? Is a large amount of English fallback acceptable? Or are we expected to defile both English and hindi by using words like “अपर केस (Apar kes, Upper case)” and “वर्ड रैप (Vard raip, Word wrap)”?I may be a little bit biased.
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Also, what does
&represent?
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@monospace-v said in Editing translations- incorporation of English:
what does
&represent?This comes before the letter that should be underlined in the menu. If the text was
T&ools, the menu would look like this:
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The translation itself should be the “best” that it can be; in other words, it would be what makes native speakers of that language the most comfortable. Maybe this is subjective?
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According to the github history for
hindi.xml, the last time someone with a knowledge of Hindi edited the file was in October 2019. The comments at the top of the source forhindi.xmlinclude email addresses for the person who created of the Hindi translation (“Rathin A. Dholakia”) and the person to last update it (“Rajendra Singh”). You might want to see if either of them are responsive to an email… and if neither responds in a reasonable amount of time, I would think the developers would be amenable to you volunteering to improve the translation. -
@alan-kilborn This makes sense. So it represents what letter should be hit, if one is trying to navigate Notepad’s menus through a keyboard? Thanks!
“Native speakers” of the language, well. If someone can understand “Phaeel” as “File” they’re probably better off with English and English is definitely a better option for them, because in this case not only is Hindi redundant, there is room for unclear interpretation. But the alternatives are having an interface with words that either don’t make sense because they’re obscure (native Hindi speakers who have trouble with English, often don’t have a word for “Macro” or “Purge”), or having an interface with some english and some Hindi words.
The third option is the ugliest, but seems very tempting. How safe is it to assume there is a power user who doesn’t know how to read English but knows the word “Purge” by reading its (more or less phonetic) version from Hindi, because they’ve HEARD the word purge?What level of fallback english is acceptable?
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@peterjones Will do. Not quite sure what I’m expected to ask… “I notice you’ve written words in hindi instead of translating them to hindi. What were you trying to do, and do you feel this could be improved and made more useful for users actually trying to use N++ in Hindi that isn’t just English written in devanagari script?”
But eitherways, I’ll do it, once I come up with something to ask. Thanks! -
I wouldn’t phrase it exactly like that. Maybe something like, “I like using Notepad++ in the Hindi translation, so thanks for your historical effort in that translation. Are you still interested in supporting that translation, and if so, would you be willing to talk about the philosophy you used for the translation (like why you chose to truly translate some words like “undo” and “redo”, but with other words like “view” and “copy” and “cut”, you did phonetic transliterations)? If you are not willing to continue helping with that translation, I will happily take over, but I didn’t want to cause offense by submitting updates to the translation or changing the philosophy of the translation before asking if you still wanted to support it.”
Of course, before writing an email like that, I would make sure that everything in that was true (for example, fact-check anything I provided in my example, especially whether or not you were truly willing to take over maintaining the hindi translation).
As far as the philosophy: I don’t know how well Hindi has adapted to modern computer technology, and whether your average user of a computer would know true Hindi terms for the actions or whether they would prefer English words. You sound like you would know better than I if someone who were using Notepad++ to edit text would know the English words or not, whether transliterated or in the English alphabet. If I were a native speaker of LanguageX, and wanted to know whether to truly translate or to transliterate, I would probably look at how other similar applications do it: what does the Microsoft Notepad or Microsoft Word/Excel use for their technical menus, translations or transliterations, or a combination? With common computer terms like copy and cut and paste, you should be able to find lots of examples in major applications that have been translated to Hindi already. Using the same terms as found in other applications would be the philosophy I would employ.
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@peterjones Noted, will check out. Thank you!
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It’s morning here and I’m reviewing your words again. I don’t plan to “take over maintenance” as much as provide an update according to what seems to be the most sensible action.
Having switched the language of display and chrome, it seems most other services use a very similar approach, and more likely than not this will just be a minor overhaul of some part of the translations.
“File,” “(Make changes),” (a better alternative to edit), “(View),” “Tool,” etc. So, the current translation could definitely be made better based on these, since there seem to be a lot of instances of transliteration where there is a translated word that brings the same idea, and occasional replacement of transliterated words with English ones.Given this similarity, we’re recalibrating our aims, and will construct an email accordingly. Thanks for your suggestions and information
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@Alan-Kilborn said in Editing translations- incorporation of English:
@monospace-v said in Editing translations- incorporation of English:
what does
&represent?This comes before the letter that should be underlined in the menu. If the text was
T&ools, the menu would look like this:Hello, I find it interesting, but mine doesn’t show any underline. How to make them appear?
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@Mayonnaisu said in Editing translations- incorporation of English:
mine doesn’t show any underline. How to make them appear?
Press and release the Alt key.
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@Alan-Kilborn
Woah, finally. Thanks!
