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Adding comments to translations

Asked by Heureka

Dear all,

While reviewing the Dutch software-center translation I wondered how to translate the English "free". That word can have (at least) two meanings in English: 1. free of charge, 2. non-proprietary.
I compared several translations (French, German, Spanish, Romanian) and noted that they disagreed on the translations: some have "non-proprietary" (libre, frei) where Dutch has "free of charge" (gratis).
Romanian even misses a translation, probably because no one was sure whether it should be "gratuit" or "liber" (excuse my Romanian, but I hope you understand).

It can be very helpful if translators could add a comment in some kind of comment box. Compare it to the discussion page on Wikipedia.
Perhaps I have missed something in the Launchpad documentation, but I don't see how it can be done. The only solution I could think of is adding an HTML comment ( <!-- text -->), but that seems not to be the ideal way to solve the problem.

Maybe the size of the comment box should be limited. If necessary a Web link could be added for further discussion.
Maybe a check box could be added to indicate whether a comment is of general interest or only for a particular language.
We could also think of a text box for comments that deal with several strings, more or less like a header in which (Dutch) GNOME translators include overall translation notes.

I hope this question leads to better translations for all of us.

Heureka

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Henning Eggers (henninge) said : 		#1

You are raising an important issue but it has has long been solved. Launchpad displays gettext comments and context information found in PO templates. Please read the gettext documentation on the matter.

http://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/manual/gettext.html#PO-Files
http://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/manual/gettext.html#Contexts

So this is a bug in the source code and/or the way the template was created using the gettext tools.

Henning

Revision history for this message
Heureka (jan-de-ridder) said : 		#2

Henning,

Thank you for answering my question.

I know that helpful (translator) comments are sometimes included.
But in a lot of cases they are not! Did you look at the example I gave? In the software-center translation there is nothing like "free means non-proprietary here". Result: some translators think it means "costing nothing". That's why I asked to add a comment box where Launchpad translators can enter text so that other translators (in other languages) can avoid translation errors and/or can save time because there's no more need to look up the exact meaning of a translation string.
Other examples: "form" can refer to different things and it's not always clear what to choose; I saw "Sort selected" translated with "Sort" as a noun, where it should be a verb; I corrected something like "Alt+Y" to "Alt+I" because the translator didn't understand that "Y" was a letter in "family" which in Dutch becomes "familie" (without a "Y")...

I understand you can add comments while editing (downloaded) PO files, which can then be uploaded. But to me this seems a very unpractical method if the only thing you want to do is adding a translator comment.
The Dutch translation team discourages using PO files because of possible interference with on line translation on the same strings.
So my question still stands: how can I add a comment that could help other translators?

Thanks in advance.

Heureka

Revision history for this message
Henning Eggers (henninge) said : 		#3

> I know that helpful (translator) comments are sometimes included.
> But in a lot of cases they are not!

I am aware of that. I was referring to the fact that these are open
source projects and you should raise the issue to the developers of the
project you are translating or submit a fix yourself.

> Did you look at the example I gave?

These are indeed problematic translations because they consist of just
one word without context. I may be repeating myself, but it is the
responsibility of the project maintainers/developers to provide this
context. It is in their best interest to get good translations for their
project.

> I understand you can add comments while editing (downloaded) PO files,
> which can then be uploaded.

No, you cannot. The comments are taken from the template upload which is
done by the project maintainer, not from PO file uploads by translators.

> So my question still stands: how can I add a comment that could help other translators?

You, as a translator in the UI, cannot. If you'd like such a feature you
are welcome to write up a specification how that might work and how
these UI comments relate to the comments from the source or template.
Display both? Which one takes precedence? What if they disagree? Who can
edit them? How to deal with false comments or spam?
Please feel free to discuss such a suggestion with us on the mailing
list or IRC.

Best Regards,
Henning

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