[gui-dev] Re: [trans] Estonian Translation

Discussion:

Justin Schmidt

2005-07-31 00:24:49 UTC

Given that the internationalization efforts are going so well, and LW
4.9 lockdown will be easing soon, I was hoping to start some
brainstorming for improving two potential issues with our current
'change language' workflow:
(1) There's a nasty scaling problem if there are too many languages
in the menu.
(2) If people accidentally choose a language they cannot understand,
frequently they don't know how to find their language again.

I know Philippe was at least considering working on a solution to (1)
using a language chooser window. This seems like it has a lot of potential.

A potential solution to (2) is to use a flag icon for the 'Change
Language' menu item (and also each of the translations in the sub-menu,
if necessary). This additional visual hinting should allow someone
scanning through the top-level menus to find their language again.
Another option is to do something with the status bar, perhaps only for
non-English users.

Any better ideas out there? =)

Justin

You're right, Estonian effectively uses the Baltic Rim Latin set, not
the Central or Western European Latin sets.
I saw this but did not know how to correct it. Anyway I commited it
because the file I had received was UTF-8 encoded (probably by someone
that did not edit it).
Note: this word appears TWICE in the bundle. There are occuren ces as
STATISTICS_CONNECTION_WAKING_UP_TIP=LimeWire ärkab üles magamise
režiimist.
Note: there are TWO charsets in ISO8859 for Baltic Rim: ISO-8859-4
- If the file was effectively encoded with Latin4, the original
character would have been a U WITH MACRON.
- If the file was effectively encoded with Latin8, it is a Z WITH CARON.
The section option is more probable given the common origin of these
words where a consonnant is evident here.
I have corrected these 3. Thanks for pointing the solution...
Philippe.
Sent: Saturday, July 30, 2005 6:42 PM
Subject: Re: [trans] Estonian Translation

Oh, cool. My fault was to look at the translate page rather than lib
The original submission is in ISO Latin 7/Baltic Rim! Not a big deal
except for 'genre' if you open it in latin 1 (I made the same
mistake). See attachment (upper is current and wrong, bottom how it
should be).

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
And Vaade is a better translation for View than Vaata. The latter is
more like...
Look, a pink elephant
Vaata, üks roosa elevant
... and the former...
What a nice view
Illus vaade
Vaata = Watch, See, Look, Vide
Vaade = View
Cheers
Roger

Isn't that the version I have uploaded already and validated in the
repository? I have also noted the error ("V" mnemonic instead of
"Vaade" keyword) and had corrected it myself...
Sent: Saturday, July 30, 2005 5:34 PM
Subject: [trans] Estonian Translation

Hi,
while we're on it... Margus Martsepp sent this (almost 100%) to
The file is encoded in ISO Latin 7/Baltic Rim. I've converted it to
#### MENU_VIEW_TITLE=View
MENU_VIEW_TITLE=V
to
MENU_VIEW_TITLE=Vaade
I tried to contact him but got no reply. :/
Cheers
Roger

----------------------------------------------------------------------
----------

Date: July 23, 2005 4:16:45 PM GMT+02:00
Subject: [trans] Translation
This is the translation to estonian.
I wanted to mention that estonian is more content-rich then
english and tue that some text may not fit in some buttons.
If there is enything else, let me know by sending a email.
-----------------------------------------
ITV - Sinu lemmiksaated internetis!
http://www.itv.ee

----------------------------------------------------------------------
----------

_______________________________________________
translate mailing list
http://www.limewire.org/mailman/listinfo/translate

----------------------------------------------------------------------
----------

_______________________________________________
translate mailing list
http://www.limewire.org/mailman/listinfo/translate

Philippe Verdy

2005-07-31 02:34:08 UTC

Permalink

I already sent a patch for this, which uses submenus to group languages by
script/character set type (as seen on the translate page). This patch was
smart enough to:
- order these script by proximity (see the proposed order on the translate
page itself),
- keep out of of a submenu the current group, so that the currently selected
language will be shown there

The other options I considered was to also keep out of a group (and place
them at the beginning of the menu), the default English language, and the
default language of the running platform (because these two will likely be
those that most users will choose, and because it will help users locate
their prefered language).

(2) If people accidentally choose a language they cannot understand,
frequently they don't know how to find their language again.
A potential solution to (2) is to use a flag icon for the 'Change
Language' menu item (and also each of the translations in the sub-menu, if
necessary). This additional visual hinting should allow someone scanning
through the top-level menus to find their language again. Another option
is to do something with the status bar, perhaps only for non-English
users.

That's what I had proposed: adding a graphic button with some flags in the
interface (for example near the animated LimeWire icon) that displays a
popup when it is clicked.

I would prefer a popup dialog with confirmation buttons (OK/Cancel), rather
that a popup menu or combo box, because it seems that people click on the
menus by error while navigating there with their mouse (and this causes most
of the calls for support, as they don't know how their LimeWire switched to
another language).

The other reasons is that:
- a dialog is less limited in size, and it can have easy to use scrollbars,
- a dialog can be created using a reusable panel class which can be shared
by the first-run installation wizard, or by the options dialog.

Philippe.

Philippe Verdy

2005-07-31 02:55:42 UTC

Permalink

I forgot to say that there's another option I was working on;
look at the "translators.html" document: it shows languages along with the
countries where they are used. This list is still incomplete, but it should
allow helping mapping languages to countries or continental regions. such a
map could be used by users by allowing them to select not only the language
but also the country for their prefered locale.

This would have a benefit: the country or continental region could be used
in connection preferences, so that users will more likely find the medias
they prefer in their region, instead of just in their language. For example
music or video preference is not bound by language, and the music or cinema
charts are often bound to geographical areas rather than languages.

Knowing that, we could use this country selection more easily than with
IP-based geolocalisation (which is not easy to administrate as it is not
very accurate with unreliable databases that must be updated constantly and
it changes over time without notice, or large ISPs like AOL are
sharing/moving their allocated IP addresses across their worldwide network).

The idea is also that users may want to select a country which is not their
current location, but simply a preference for contents. (forcing users to
use their current IP location is too much intrusive for user privacy).

So when a user would select a country, they would be offered the choice to
prefer connections by region or by language. The current system is only
bound to a precise language and does not work well for non major languages
where available content is too rare (also look at French for example, where
Canadian users will see too many European contents from France, but will not
see enough Canadian English contents...)

Another benefit of setting a regional connection preference is that
connections will be easier and faster as these prefered connections will
avoid most slow and costly intercontinental connections. This will globally
optimize the network for speed, without cutting completely the
interconnections across continents.

To allow such a change in connection preferences, we will need to update the
way the servents are exchanging locale information: it should not send only
the language, but also the country selection, and the receiving agent will
make its own decision based on its local user preference settings.

Philippe Verdy

2005-07-31 03:15:56 UTC

Permalink

Post by Philippe Verdy
I forgot to say that there's another option I was working on;
look at the "translators.html" document: it shows languages along with the
countries where they are used. This list is still incomplete, but it
should allow helping mapping languages to countries or continental
regions. such a map could be used by users by allowing them to select not
only the language but also the country for their prefered locale.

To finish this mapping of languages to countries, an interesting source is
the public CIA fact book about countries, that list the main languages
spoken in each country... This list is also used as a source in Wikipedia
articles for each country... (Wikipedia becomes now a very reliable and
better updated source of info for internationalization.)
There may exist other easier to use resources on the Internet.