i18n: Courtesy treatments
Marc Fargas Esteve
So I'm re-sending.
=================
Hi,
On latin languages, at least, there are two ways to refer to the other
part of a conversation, or a reader.
You can refer to them as "You" ("tú", "tu") or you could refer to them
with another pronoun which has a special name I can't remember, those
have no translation to English but, for "You" they would be "Usted",
"Vosté" in Spanish and Catalan which is the "more polite" way, and the
common in proffessional sites and documents.
When translating a text from English to a latin language (Spanish and
Catalan for example) you have to decide whether to translate using the
first or second form. On a random text this poses no problem, but if
you're translating something like the stock django .po files there's an
issue...
The second form is what could be called "the impersonal one" and is the
one that a bussiness looking at django will like on the translation as
their site will be written using that same formula the translation
would make sense with the content of the site. ie. the Catalan
translation is submitted this way. But then, if you are building a
personal site you'll most likely use the first form (that has a verb:
"tutear") but then, if the translation uses the second one the text
outputted by django will not make sense with your content.
Another issue is that, as there's no doc that says whether things
should be translated one way or the other you can have every language
with one approach or another which isn't nice for multilanguage sites.
So, a few questions arise:
a) On languages that provide those two forms of communication, the
"polite" and the "not so polite" (as explained by the Spanish Academy
Dictionary) which one is to be used on Django translations?
b) What do we do then with the other side of the users? (the one
that will write their content in the other form).
For a) I'd suggest to use the first form, the "polite" as it's the
recommended by Spanish language institutions ( www.rae.es), for b) ...
here comes the issue! my first idea was to simply create a new locale,
i.e. "es-tu" (for 'es-tuteada') which would be the "tuteated" variant
for es-, "ca-tu" and so on. That would be the cleanest way to handle
this but I don't know if it can be done at a programming level.
On the other side, I've never seen a framework telling whether they use
form 1) or 2) [normally the translations use a mix of both, which is
the worst case!] and none provides a way to choose between.
What do you think?
Marc.
PS: Sent to i18n as it, right now, has more to do with i18n that
development itself.
Jorge Gajon
I don' think it would be a good idea to create a separate locale
(es-tu), it would be more work to keep more files up to date, and also
what would happen with the es-AR locale ? you can't have an es-AR-tu.
My opinion is that we should stay with the formal tone in the
messages. Most of this messages are used only in the admin, and I
think that 90% of the cases where you give admin access to someone
they expect to see a 'polite' interface, it is a working tool for
these people after all.
I would also like to know what other people thing about this.
Regards,
Jorge
Mario
> My opinion is that we should stay with the formal tone in the
> messages. Most of this messages are used only in the admin, and I
> think that 90% of the cases where you give admin access to someone
> they expect to see a 'polite' interface, it is a working tool for
> these people after all.
>
:-) hehe, this is one thing that was a bit hard to me, when I start
to speak English I always asked to my teachers, what about if I'm
speaking with an old person, if I want to know his name: "What's your
name?" that's rigth but if I think the same idea in Spanish I was
disrespectfull.
No es bueno tutear ;-)
Well, I'm agree that all translations must stay in a formal tone.
>
Marc Fargas Esteve
Then, I'll get a deeper look at 'es' as it goes the other way on this issue. If somebody knows the english term to define this "polite" tone it would be fine to write it down on the contributing documentation just to make sure that other languages with this issue know which approach to take!
Cheers,
Marc
Mario Gonzalez
> If somebody knows the english term to define this "polite" tone it would be
> fine to write it down on the contributing documentation just to make sure
> that other languages with this issue know which approach to take!
>
ok, so the problem is:
Spanish | English
==========
Tu | You (informal)
Usted | You (Formal, poite)
>
Marc Fargas Esteve
As Jorge said, we should go for the "Usted" formal/polite
translations. The recentrly commited 'es/' seems to have been updated
taking this approach, Catalan is also done this way. Dunno about
'es-AR'. Any other languages you're aware that have this treatments?
Cheers,
Marc.
Ramiro Morales
>
> Exactly,
> As Jorge said, we should go for the "Usted" formal/polite
> translations. The recentrly commited 'es/' seems to have been updated
> taking this approach, Catalan is also done this way. Dunno about
> 'es-AR'. Any other languages you're aware that have this treatments?
Yes, the es_AR maintains/sues the polite form.
Regards,
--
Ramiro Morales
Mario Gonzalez
>
> Exactly,
> As Jorge said, we should go for the "Usted" formal/polite
> translations. The recentrly commited 'es/' seems to have been updated
Great!
>
Malcolm Tredinnick
I obviously have no real horse in this race, since I don't speak many
foreign languages, however I'll just add to this thread that it is
common practice in translation policies to stick with the formal/polite
form whenever multiple versions exist in a language. You just don't know
who the end-user is going to be and erring on the side of politeness is
almost always the better approach.
Regards,
Malcolm