For current and new translators, here’s a list with words and how to translate them. This is to avoid everyone using different translations. Rest of post will be in Dutch.
Stijl
De vertaling is in de jij-vorm.
Let op gecombineerde woorden. In het Engels staat er een spatie tussen, in het Nederlands niet. Dus email address wordt e-mailadres.
Niet overal hoofdletters. In het Engels hebben de woorden van titels vaak allemaal een hoofdletter. Volgende Maand wordt dus Volgende maand.
Eerlijk gezegd twijfel ik nu over het gebruik van de hoofdletters. Benieuwd naar jullie mening.
Achter privé komt volgens het Groene Boekje altijd een streepje. Dus privé-berichten.
Woorden
Sommige woorden worden niet uit het Engels vertaald, omdat deze algemeen gebruikt worden op internet, ook door Nederlanders.
topic → topic # Let op: de topic, niet het topic. Opdat dit een gangbaar woord is geworden, wordt deze niet vertaald naar bijv. onderwerp. Engelse woorden zijn in het Nederlands vrijwel altijd mannelijk/vrouwelijk, vandaar de/deze.
track → volgen
watch → in de gaten houden
hot → populair
latest → recent (i.p.v. laatste)
trust level → trustlevel # vertrouwenslevel klinkt wat oubollig
post → bericht
mentioned → genoemd # voorbeeld: There is no mention of this group wordt Deze groep is niet genoemd.
mute → negeren
email → e-mail # zelfs in het Engels is de officiële schrijfwijze eigenlijk met een -
public → openbaar
like → like # zijn we door Facebook inmiddels zo aan gewend. Zelfs al heet het daar ‘vind ik leuk’, we spreken over likes. Verder voorkomt het dat er telkens aanhalingstekens omheen moeten.
sorry → sorry
bookmark → favoriet
Todolijst
Om er voor te zorgen dat de al vertaalde strings ook in bovenstaande passen, moet er nog wat gebeuren:
New here, hope I’m not running into necro bumping territory right now…
How do you translate “generated”? For instance, I’m now looking at: “Invite link generated successfully!” I’m inclined to go for “Uitnodigingslink succesvol gegenereerd!” but maybe “gemaakt” is better (more informal).
Also, what about removing “is/was” in constructions like the one above? Absolutely correct would be “Uitnodigingslink is succesvol gegenereerd”, but as the English variant also tends to drop the is/was in constructions like this I’m inclined to do the same. What do you think?
I’m just going through strings, translating them over at Transifex at the moment, I hope I’m not breaking any workflow (don’t see an equivalent of pull/merge request or anything).
And what about prepositions (voorzetsels)? Do you generally drop them at the start of a message? E.g. “Invite link is only valid for this email address: %{email}” => “Uitnodigingslink is alleen geldig voor dit e-mailadres: %{email}”
I think gegenereerd is a technical term, not speech. I’d say aangemaakt.
Discourse is a conversational tool. Using is/was keeps the system conversational as well. It’s true those words are dropped in English, but somehow the feel is different.
Once your translations are reviewed by one of the reviewers in the team, they’ll be pushed to the repository by @neil.
Funny, we drop them there indeed, while I tend to like is/was… That might be inconsistent. Then again, I like it that way. Any more opinions? @sling?
The pleasure is all mine, I’m starting up a full Dutch community (including people who aren’t that proficient in English) so from every translated string we benefit.
Sounds a lot better indeed, I’ll revise.
Alright, then I’ll stick to that policy (at least for now). My opinion is that dropping both is appropriate for quick responses for administrative tasks, I think. Once you have to read things very often, every word less is a blessing
Thanks for the explanation! That’s a relief, I won’t hold back then ^^
Another quick question, how do you refer to a user? “They” is a nice unisex personal pronoun but sadly we don’t have something like that in Dutch (as far as I’m aware). I’ve now chosen to just reuse {{username}}, which does end up in a warning from Transifex but with my little Ruby knowledge I dare assume it will work regardless.
Unfortunately someone changed most of the strings from je/jij to u (informal to formal). Because he was a reviewer, he was able to do that. Can’t say I’m happy, it’s a lot of work to change it back.
Please, while we love having everyone help with the translation, don’t go rogue with a new policy on your own. It doesn’t help. And in this case it’s ignoring the hard work of @Sling.
I’m curious who this user Tonnes is, can’t find him on Discourse here and can’t remember I made him a reviewer. Maybe you did, @codinghorror? Or maybe my memory is bugged.
Edit: Ton (Tonnes) and I had a conversation through PM. I hope he will join us here so we can all talk about the plans he has. I think he has some good ideas, but I want to talk about them here, so people can find out about it later.
Another thing to think about: while not perfect, we had an informal Dutch translation. Ton changed many of the strings to formal. This gives us two choices:
We keep it like that, meaning we lose all the informal strings. Lots of work lost.
We revert (if possible) Ton’s formal edits to get the informal ones back. But that means all of Ton’s work would be lost
We find a way to keep Ton’s work and have a formal version and we find a way to get the informal version back
1 And 2 are definitely not a good option. And 3 is probably a lot of work, having to clone the repo and then revert every single string.
An Ton, please, next time tell us about your plans for a formal version. Cause we could have made a plan to keep both versions. Now it’s a lot of extra work.
I don’t understand the need for a formal/informal version of each language. But I only speak English. Does Transifex offer any solution for managing this? Anything we do will start in Transifex.
French has the “tu” / “vous” distinction and depending on the community, one might fit better than the other.
So, I understand people asking for formal/informal version of the translations.
But, I’m afraid that, other than duplicating a language, transifex doesn’t support this…
(I could be wrong though, not a transifex expert by any means).
Could you, for starters, clone the Dutch version? We still need to find a way to preserve the informal and formal versions, now that they’re on top of each other.
I’m having a bit of an issue with the use of ‘gemeenschap’ as a translation for ‘community’… two issues actually: it reminds people of either intercourse or cults, and imo it’s somewhat archaic.
Do I have a better idea, then? No, sorry. I circumvented it by using ‘op het forum’ instead of ‘in onze gemeenschap’.
