[Fedora-trans-ar] FC3 & Arabic Translation

Munzir Taha munzirtaha at newhorizons.com.sa
Tue Jul 6 19:04:46 UTC 2004


On Yau al-Thulatha 18 Jumaada al-Awal 1425 03:29 pm, Sherif Abdelgawad wrote:

> I want to know when we are expecting to have 100%
> done? Munzir where are you wrt to the dist file?

Well, the dist file is being worked on by alhadi and me. He is an excellent 
translator but his familiarity with Linux and Computers in general is not 
great, so I expect he would have some errors but for sure he will make our 
job of QA easier.

I would commit the translated part of dist.po/ar.po tomorrow inshallah. I am 
not sure if you have a webcvs access that would help us to see a clear 
picture of the diff to previous but I want to inform you that I was 
translating the file from the bottom where alhadi is translating from top. 
This is just to know who to blame ;)

I was very busy with our KACST team helping them in translation and putting 
standards and doing translation myself and this is why my contrib to Fedora 
is rather slow but steady.

I highly recommend you take a look at my translation and point me to any 
issues we need to discuss so we put a standard and stick to it.

> I had a look at some of the files translated,
> and I really find a lot of poor grammer, and
> weired translation, which need serious QA.

Let's begin it, please.

> So I belive the QA process will take more time
> than just the translaiton took. So how about we
> start this at least for the stuff are done.

I highly agree.

> I have sometime this week which I can really
> would like to use fully to help here.

Happy to hear this ;)

> So guys, what do you think we should do?
>
> First I think we should put schdule to meet
> FC3 timelines and have this release come with
> 100% translation.

OK put any schedule and I would be happy to stick to it. Just keep in mind we 
are working on many things at the same time. Sure, Fedora has a priority, and 
a high priority but I found that it's rather difficult for the translators so 
I would do most of it myself.

> Second, I think we need to discuss the terms
> and translation to reach a point where it is
> acceptable.

OK, let's begin it now:
First, my humble view point for the translation of application/program names 
is that we have two acceptable choices: either we stick to the English term 
as it is. Qt, GNU, KDE and the like would be written as it is in the Arabic 
translation or

the second method:
we can translitrate it into Arabic letters. In this case, we need to 
translitrate it by how it is pronounced not how it's written. So, we use the 
arabic letters for /cu:te/, /gnoo/, and /kei di: ei:/ i.e.:
كيوت، جنو، كي دي إي
On this we would follow the official pronounciation not the public one.

The first method's disadvantage is that arabic people who don't know english 
at all (and this is a big slice ;) ) would found this odd and intimidating. 
They are not used to this in their M$ windows OS. The latter method is more 
logic but it faces the problem of looking odd at the begining for the 
translator, most of us even pronounce such words exactly in the wrong way ;)

The third method is to use both the arabic transliteration accompanied with 
the english term. This is more safer but we need to be aware of space 
constrains. I myself is strongly with the third method in general or the 
second sometimes depending on my mood ;)

This is the #1 issue.

We can also put a doc somewhere that's entitled common mistakes on translation 
to aid with the QA. I think we would fill the list with discussions in the 
comming days and this is why we have this list afterall.

Thanks for launching the discussion on the subject.

-- 
Munzir Taha  PGP Key available
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Telecommunications and Electronics Engineer
Linux Registered User #279362 at http://counter.li.org
Mandrake Club member
Maintainer of the Open Arabic Bugs Project at
http://wiki.arabeyes.org/OpenBugs
CIW Designer, ICDL, MOUS
New Horizons CLC
Riyadh, SA




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