I have started working on completing discourse portuguese-Portugal (pt_PT) language translation.
I created this topic to document the translation and provide a meeting point for discussion.
##You: informal vs formal
You can be translated as “Tu” (informal) or “Você” (formal). Depending on your audience, one might be more appropriate than the other. The current translation uses the formal form.
There is a tendency to avoid using the pronoun, even if using the corresponding conjugations is accepted. I ignored this in cases where the readability is improved by being explicit via the pronoun.
Post, reply, topic and messages
In discourse english terminology, you have topics, to which users can reply to. “post” (noun) is used mostly for what replies create, but also for topics. This makes it difficult to know from the english version of a string alone if it is okay to replace “post” with the portuguese equivalent of “reply”.
“Tópico” is a direct translation of topic, which is widely used, so there’s not much to discuss there.
However, in portuguese, there is no widely used term for “post”.
A direct translation is “publicar”(verb) and “publicação”(noun), which loses the specificity of the english term. “post” in english refers specifically to online publications.
“post” at oxford dictionary
“publicação” at priberam dictionary
Therefore, “publicação” in portuguese is often used for blog pieces / articles, and not for what discourse calls posts / topics.
Example of “publicação” used for blog pieces: http://www.fpae.pt/
Other terms used in portuguese forums are “entrada” (entry), “resposta” (reply).
Some forums use “mensagem” (message), and then use “mensagens privadas”(private messages) for private messages.
Examples of usage in portuguese forums:
There is some repulsion to the use of “poste” (a phonetic equivalent of the noun “post”) or “postar” (the verb form) for portuguese-Portugal, due to ambiguities introduced by this new use and the fact it is a direct appropriation of an english term.
Here’s two blog entries by a linguist, appointed by the Portuguese Government to discuss the portuguese language in cyber matters, about these two:
“o verbo postar de post”
(about “postar” (“post” as verb)
a melhor tradução de post
(about the correct translation of “post”)
I propose using:
- “publicar” (verb) for the act of uploading either a topic or a post (discourse terminology)
- “publicação” (noun) for referring to either a topic or a post
- “resposta” (reply) for referring to posts.
- “mensagem” (message) for referring to discourse messages.
Although not usually found in forums, “publicar”/“publicação” does not introduce ambiguity as “mensagens” does, does not alienate users as “postar”/“poste” would, and is more precise than “entrada”.
This might or might not work with the way strings are set up.
Currently, the pt_PT (portuguese-Portugal) language at transifex uses “mensagens” for posts and private messages.
The pt_PT translation is at roughly 80% in client.yml, and has had no contributions in ~ 1 year.
Therefore I will start implementing these changes, until anyone raises any objections.
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In that case, Nenhuma is the best option.