Re: Q: Can you please assist me with translation?

[Martin v. Loewis]

Paul Eggert <address@hidden> writes:

> I have made requests from several language teams over the years.  The
> most recent request I made before this one, for example, was a month
> ago to the Spanish team about their translation for Bison.  A couple
> weeks before that, I requested a change to the German team about their
> translation for Diffutils.  I have a reasonably good record of having
> requests accepted, even though I am not a native speaker of any
> language other than English.

I don't know what you've requested for the Bison translation, but for
diffutils, the issue was a technical problem: the encoding was
misidentified. It was helpful that you could identify the problem, and
you clearly have the expertise to identify such technical problems.
I'd still question your expertise with identifying cultural issues.

We (as TP coordinators) stay out of such issues as much as we can. We
will help in *technical* matters (such as introducing the nn and nb
language codes for the two major Norwegian writing systems), but when
it comes to cultural issues, we need to trust the expertise of the
teams (e.g. whether or not to split the Chinese team into a PRC and a
Taiwanese team).

> Obviously I don't have the time to check every byte of every
> translation, but it's not unreasonable for me to make requests when
> I see the opportunity.

I'd encourage you to use very careful wording, then. If in doubt,
please contact address@hidden first.

> Oh, my.  Have the Bosnians agreed on a dialect now?  It's hard to
> imagine Bosnians agreeing about anything.  :-(

Please, stay away from such formulations. Politics is not our
business.

> It's a minor request for a comment in the style already used by the
> Norwegian teams.

Actually, the Norwegian teams now use nn/nb, instead of the @nynorsk
identification - after ISO assigned those codes. In any case: You
*cannot* apply the approaches taken in one region of the world to
other regions automatically. You really need to be an expert in a
language and its culture for that.

Regards,
Martin