On Mon, 27 Feb 2012, Hin-Tak Leung wrote: [...]
- some of the changes are over-eager: i.e. it "improves" on windows
and tried to be more user-friendly, but not exactly how windows does it.
I think there should be a notes on the translation FAQ: one is not looking to be "better than" windows, but bug-for-bug-compatible. Therefore translation is preferably what regional/localized windows (whatever version) does.
20% of the world's population is Chinese, I am sure it is easy enough to do a few screenshots of localized windows (be in traditional or simplied) and show how those behave.
There is a definitive answer (or "definition answers") to most of these translation strings: what localized windows (some version) does. It is not up to individual or group opinions, really. I mean, public libraries, etc have windows in the far east, there is no excuse to be wrong, or on the opposite extreme, "try to improve on windows", even if one does not want to get one's hand dirty and own a windows box.
The dialog labels and error messages are an area where we don't need to and don't want to be word for word identical to Windows.
We should definitely follow the Windows User Experience Interaction Guidelines: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa511258.aspx
The Windows GUI is certainly be a valuable resource to determine which terms the users are going to be familiar with (e.g. will they more readily understand 'directory' or 'folder'). That said Wine runs on Linux and Mac OS X so Wine's users will likely be somewhat accustomed to the terms used by these platforms too.
But in any case blindly copying all the strings from the Windows GUI would be a very bad idea.
--- On Mon, 27/2/12, Francois Gouget fgouget@free.fr wrote:
On Mon, 27 Feb 2012, Hin-Tak Leung wrote: [...]
- some of the changes are over-eager: i.e. it
"improves" on windows
and tried to be more user-friendly, but not exactly how
windows does
it.
I think there should be a notes on the translation FAQ:
one is not
looking to be "better than" windows, but
bug-for-bug-compatible.
Therefore translation is preferably what
regional/localized windows
(whatever version) does.
20% of the world's population is Chinese, I am sure it
is easy enough
to do a few screenshots of localized windows (be in
traditional or
simplied) and show how those behave.
There is a definitive answer (or "definition answers")
to most of
these translation strings: what localized windows (some
version) does.
It is not up to individual or group opinions, really. I
mean, public
libraries, etc have windows in the far east, there is
no excuse to be
wrong, or on the opposite extreme, "try to improve on
windows", even
if one does not want to get one's hand dirty and own a
windows box.
The dialog labels and error messages are an area where we don't need to and don't want to be word for word identical to Windows.
We should definitely follow the Windows User Experience Interaction Guidelines: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa511258.aspx
The Windows GUI is certainly be a valuable resource to determine which terms the users are going to be familiar with (e.g. will they more readily understand 'directory' or 'folder'). That said Wine runs on Linux and Mac OS X so Wine's users will likely be somewhat accustomed to the terms used by these platforms too.
But in any case blindly copying all the strings from the Windows GUI would be a very bad idea.
but wine is supposed to be bug-for-bug compatible with windows, (just as a joke, or not), surely that includes poor user experience? :-).
that aside, I think you are quite wrong in trying to "improve user experience". That's a matter of opinion - and unfortunately, I have already pointed out, some of the changes are just opinions, and therefore subject to churns - i.e. some will disagree and want the older version of a translation of a particular phrase back, etc.
On Mon, 27 Feb 2012, Hin-Tak Leung wrote: [...]
that aside, I think you are quite wrong in trying to "improve user experience". That's a matter of opinion - and unfortunately, I have already pointed out, some of the changes are just opinions, and therefore subject to churns - i.e. some will disagree and want the older version of a translation of a particular phrase back, etc.
I don't have an opinion on the quality of the Taiwanese translation besides the typography aspects for the simple that I don't speak that language. So I'm making no judgement on it and will let Taiwanese translators hash it out.
All I want to make clear is that blindly copying Windows' strings is not the wrong approach and not acceptable (and that's true for all languages).
-
Francois Gouget -
Hin-Tak Leung