[rt-users] RT 3.8.x Translation - Question for German Users

[Ruslan Zakirov]

On Thu, Aug 21, 2008 at 12:14 PM, Nehmer Torben <torben.nehmer at cancom.de> wrote:
> Hi there,
>
>>>> Dashboard, Queue and Ticket. Should it be translated or should it be
>>>> like it is?
>>
>> My experience is that it makes it easier not to translate Queue and
>> Ticket. I myself find it very confusing to explain anything to my
>> RT-Users about Stapel and not Queue. So, at least stay with Queue and
>> Ticket. Since I don't know what the Dashboard in RT is, just leave it...
>
> What I would find *most* useful in the translation is keeping the Rights in their original English value. It is an administrative nightmare trying to manipulate rights in the German translation.
>
> For example, "Take Ticket" and "Steal Ticket" are indistinguishable in the German translation (both "Ticket übernehmen") and the sorting of the right fields is based on the English locale.

Sorting by English variant is a bug and it's a nightmare for all
translations. I've created a bug report
(http://rt3.fsck.com/Ticket/Display.html?id=12343), if somebody
provide us a patch that would be great, shouldn't be hard.

>
> As for things like "Queue" or "Dashboard" I would find a *sensible* translation quite useful. The general 3.6 translation is not bad in that part, except that it has still a few errors. "[time] left" is translated as the direction left (as in move to the left) instead of its original temporal meaning. But these are a few minor concerns.
>
> As for Dashboard I'd recommend something like "Arbeitsplätze" or "Übersichten" (note the plural). The literal translation ("Armaturenbrett / Instrumententafel") of dashboard is not ideal. The words are only used in the context of real dashboards (as in a car or an airplane).

In russian translation we used "information panel" as the most close
description of Dashboards.

>
> In total I find a sensible translation very helpful to the non-English speakers I am working here. The important part is that it needs to be sensible, and not just passing everything through an translation. The original translator definitely did not check his translation in the web site.
>
> Naturally, any translation will both increase the bulk of the UI and introduce a bit of ambiguity. One cannot avoid this when translating, you can just try to minimize it.
>
> The problem mentioned here is true for the technically adept. Those people (like myself, to be true) who prefer the original compact English UI. But this holds true only for the real IT power users. They can always keep the English UI active.
>
> The more average people you have, the less their English skills are, the more problems you introduce by keeping the UI partly English. It is very important for them to have a clear translated UI. Only very domain specific phrases should be kept in English. Something like "Queue" with its real IT meaning isn't well known. Most people, when reading it, will rather think of a Billard Queue.
>
> The same holds true for "Dashboard". Go out and ask a couple of Users what they would expect of a menu item called like that in a ticket system. Then ask then what they would expect from "Arbeitsplätze" or "Übersichten" instead.
>
> Unfortunalety, I have no idea how to update the translations. Also I don't know if the German translation is still maintained. If not, I might actually volunteer to help a bit here, if I can get some advise how the string tables are updated.

No string tables, it's just a file lib/RT/I18N/de.po and `make
regenerate-catalogs` make target you can use to fresh all files with
new strings from the source.

>
> Yours,
> Torben Nehmer


-- 
Best regards, Ruslan.