[maemo-developers] Maemo localization to officially non-supported languages

[From: Kimmo Hämäläinen]

On Wed, 2007-10-24 at 15:14 +0300, Marius Vollmer wrote:
> "ext Marius Vollmer" <marius.vollmer at nokia.com> writes:
> 
> > We change the code.  Simple.  Providing unneeded context is bad in my
> > opinion, and the way we do it with the logical ids is excessivly ugly.
> 
> Also, we provide excessive context, but not very relevant context.
> Take "ai_bd_new_repository_ok" as an example: What does it matter that
> this is the Application Manager asking you whether it is OK to add a
> new repository?  The relvant context is that it's a OK/Cancel dialog,
> and that could be encoded with just "confirm|OK", maemo-wide.  A
> dialog that just requires ackowledgement could use "acknowledge|OK".

As I already said, some languages _cannot_ use 'OK' for those, they have
to use the verb, e.g. 'Add'.  Maybe we could use some kind of logical
propositions to go around this: 'Is it true that you want to add a new
repository? True/False' ;)

> Doing cleanup work like this would actually increase the quality of
> translations, I would expect, because the UI speccer could choose a
> well-known, meaningful context in most cases, instead of just making
> every string unique.

Hmm, I cannot imagine how lack of alternatives would help to make better
translations. If the translator has to think how to make the translation
to fit our 10 different contexts, it cannot make her job easier, and the
result will probably be some kind of compromise that does not really fit
well any of the contexts.

> Ok I should shut up now...

I agree :)

BR, Kimmo