On 4/6/2014 09:12, Dmitry Timoshkov wrote:
Nikolay Sivov bunglehead@gmail.com wrote:
Looks good. I especially like changes like these:
-msgstr "Пожалуйста, выберите файл." +msgstr "Выберите файл."
No, this doesn't match the original english text.
I matches okay and sounds better. Verb form is already in plural which makes 'please' redundant.
'Please' is never redundant, please don't invent new rules. Or should I omit 'please' here?
No, you can't. There's no way to express it in English, don't be silly. Suggested form is shorter and has exactly same meaning - politely asks to do something.
'Please select a file' and 'Select a file' have cleary different emotional meaning both in english and in russian. If you would like to omit 'please' in russian translations you need to correct english version first.
English version is fine, I explained below.
Why for instance in the same translation update "SCANNING... Please Wait" still contains 'пожалуйста' (please) then? There are other occurances of 'please' all over the place, are you suggesting to remove them all as well in the russian translation?
Not necessary, it's not all-or-nothing rule. Each case should be considered separately, for "SCANNING.." one it's better to keep 'please' translated, because otherwise it becomes too short and feels incomplete (no, same doesn't apply for select a file).
What's so special about russian language that it should sound rude while the original text intentionally has 'please'?
I never said it should. It's not something unique to Russian language, French has same thing too - ability to address a single person respectfully with a verb form also used for plural form for you/вы/vous. There's two ways to translate 'select' in imperative way - "выбери" or "выберите". First variant is what you call rude, and I'm not suggesting to use it. Second variant is respectful enough to skip 'please'.
Some other translationsdon't match either, for instance
"This large number of copies is not supported by your printer.\n" "Please enter a value between 1 and %d." msgstr ""-"Такое большое количество копий не может быть напечатано вашим принтером.\n" +"Такое большое количество копий не может быть напечатано этим принтером.\n"
What you mean? 'your' translated literally is out of place here. Article or a possessive pronoun before a noun is not a requirement in Russian, as I'm sure you know. In this particular phase it would be enough to say 'не поддерживается принтером'. No need to literally match English variant.
'your printer' and 'this printer' have two distinct and different meanings, please avoid inventing new traslation rules unless you have a degree in this area.
Could we talk about this particular case instead of making generalizations or discussing degrees? Thing is distinction is not important here, 'your' exists in English variant because it has to.
If it's not important then there is nothing to discuss and "fix".
In general it's important IMHO to keep translated text match its english version as much as possible. One of the reasons is to avoid other translators from fixing the mismatches, another is to really keep the UI consistent in different languages.
Julius' answer covers that part.