Why not translating pangram?

[Yuri Chornoivan]

Thu, 27 Dec 2012 09:36:34 +0200 було написано Tommy He  
<lovenemesis at fedoraproject.org>:

> My dear fellows,
>
> Probably you're familiar with the famous phrase 'The quick brown fox
> jumps over the lazy dog'. As a pangram[1] it seems to be a standard
> typeface sample in any font viewer or configuration tool on any OS or
> DE. I'm fine with its popularity. What always confuses me is that it
> always remains the English form, never localized. I searched online,
> but the seemingly all-known Internet failed to provide an reasonable
> answer. Until recently I pick up the localization of fonts-tweak-tool,
> which is a new font configuration tool formally introduced in coming
> Fedora 18[2], this question haunted in my mind so hard that I have to
> ask here.
>
> Since the main purpose of pangram in font viewer is about the
> typefaces of characters, it wouldn't be much useful if literally
> translating 'quick brown fox' into another language. The ideal way I
> can think is to find a pangram native to the target language. For
> example, if I were using gnome-font-viewer to open a Chinese font(it
> seems that the metadata of a font can tell what language this font is
> intended for, but I'm not 100% sure), my concern is on how this font
> looks on Chinese characters. The 'quick brown fox' only showing 26
> alphabetical English characters just won't do. A Chinese pangram, if
> exists, will provide more in this case. However, in practice, there's
> a need to know how the 26 English alphabets look even in a non-English
> font. So displaying the English and the localized pangrams side by
> side would be more suitable.
>
> All right. To put it simple, do you think it would be more helpful if:
> a). for English font, display the "quick brown fox" pangram as sample.
> b). for non-English font, display the "quick brown fox" AND the
> pangram native to the language specified by the font metadata as
> samples.
>
> Obviously it requires both effort from developers and translators to
> make it happen. I'm not sure if there's any technical difficulty in
> fonts-tweak-tool thus CCed the main developer Akira. Also I'm writing
> to you the translators of Fedora Project to seek your opinions and
> expertise.
>
> PS: There are quite a number of pangrams in numerous languages listed
> on Wikipedia[3].
>
> Regards,
> Tommy He
>
> [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pangram
> [2]https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/Fedora/18/html/Release_Notes/sect-Release_Notes-Changes_for_Desktop.html#idp714464
> [3]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pangrams

Hi,

I think that pangrams in a user context are only useful if they show the  
native characters. Combined representation can be helpful if localization  
is incomplete and there are not too many fonts without basic Latin after  
all.

Do not know about Gtk-desktops, but in KDE pangrams were always  
translatable (including Traditional Chinese):

http://l10n.kde.org/dictionary/search-translations.php?package=kde-workspace&filename=&teamcode=&search=Quick+brown+fox&submitted=Search

Just my 2 cents.

Best regards,
Yuri,
Ukrainian translator