fedora only for US users ?

[Nicolas Mailhot]

Pekka Savola wrote:
> On Sat, 27 Sep 2003, Andrew Sobala wrote:
> 
>>On Sat, 2003-09-27 at 14:28, Pekka Savola wrote:

> Some of my observations from technical translations:
> 
>  1) more often than not, they seem badly translated, or there just isn't
> useful local Language terminology which would be commonly understood.

And how deferring translations is going to improve quality ?
Short of actually paying technical translators (and yes some of them are 
quite good, don't confuse summer intern work with real professional 
stuff) the only way to have quality work is to expose translations as 
soon as possible and have people report typos and errors (exactly what 
rawhide is doing now)

>  2) technical folks don't even know what the local Language term X refers
> to (compared to the English version), as the terms aren't stable, and
> globally common.

The terms aren't stable or common when the translated body is small.
Any big translation effort will find good terminology and standardise on 
it. The worst thing that can happen is small teams doing bits without 
any coordination (which happens when the translated works are not 
published as soon as they are translated).

That the terms have no relation with the technical english equivalents 
does not matter. Poetic nature matters more since that's what makes a 
living language. When you look at it most english terms started as a bad 
  analogy (from a technical point of view) or joke anyway.

Some of the best translations I've seen have nothing in common with the 
english terms or the accepted accademical/commercial translation. But 
they make perfect sense because someone at some time had a great 
inspiration and found out a term that just fit. And this was in open 
translation groups works btw.

And didn't you notice most of free software has an irc piggin english 
that's no better that the translations you criticize ?

> So, using the local language is often a much bigger
> problem, especially if you report bugs, discuss features or such in
> English.

It poses a problem in reports all right. Just live with it. Reporters do 
not speak C anyway. You might as well forbid icons because not two 
persons will describe these colourfoul thinguies the same way.

>  3) translations are often not really in sync with the latest versions, 
> some translations are missing, or not everything is translated anyway.

And software is not perfect too. That's why we have a QA infrastructure. 
  Demanding that some work should be held to higher standards just 
because it belongs to another profession is the higuest form of arrogance.

(speaking as someone that writes bad developper english all day but 
happens to have a mother who works as a professional technical translator)

-- 
Nicolas Mailhot