Workspace Localization
Rob Campbell
We've just landed bug 642176[1], "Integrate Workspaces extension into
the browser" into our devtools project branch[2][3]. We're hoping to
merge back into mozilla-central sometime in the next week or so to
target Firefox 6. Axel rightly pointed out that the name "Workspace"
may not translate well into other languages, citing German as one of
the potentially difficult locales.
What is the "Workspace" feature? It's a simple text editor for writing
and running bits of JavaScript code. It's a prototyping tool. It's a
debugging tool. It's a something to use for experimentation.
The name "Workspace" came from the Smalltalk-80 programming
environment[4]. I've blogged about it recently.[5][6]
At the risk of opening up a big bikeshed naming discussion, I ask you,
is this a good name for the feature? Can you think of another name
that would localize better?
Next week, we'll take a look at the responses and choose the best, or
ship with Workspace as it is now and leave this discussion as a list
of possible candidates for translation to other locales as needed.
Thanks!
Rob "robcee" Campbell
[1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=642176
[2] http://hg.mozilla.org/projects/devtools
[3] http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nightly/ (search
for "devtools")
[4] http://stephane.ducasse.free.fr/FreeBooks/TheInteractiveProgrammingEnv
[5] http://antennasoft.net/robcee/2011/01/05/javascript-workspaces/
[6] http://antennasoft.net/robcee/2011/01/06/the-best-development-tools-1983-had-to-offer/
David Illsley
David
Ehsan Akhgari
meaningful way. I think what we usually do in this kind of situation is
add localization notes explaining the rationale behind the name and
telling localizers that it's OK if they pick a word more suitable for
describing the feature in their language.
Cheers,
Ehsan
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Robert Kaiser
> I think the term "workspace" cannot be translated to all languages in a
> meaningful way.
IMHO, it's even too unspecific in meaning to be really useful to
English-speaking users.
Robert Kaiser
--
Note that any statements of mine - no matter how passionate - are never
meant to be offensive but very often as food for thought or possible
arguments that we as a community needs answers to. And most of the time,
I even appreciate irony and fun! :)
Rimas Kudelis
I don't think you really have to adapt this metaphor to non-English
speakers. There may also be one or more languages where certain metaphor
won't work well, but that doesn't mean you can't use it in all the other
languages.
IMO, it would be quite OK to simply add a huge L10N note explaining what
Workspace is and how to see it in action. Localizers could then choose
the appropriate terms for their locale, even if those terms would have
little in common with the en-US metaphor.
Rimas
Ricardo Palomares Martínez
> Hi Rob, and others,
>
> I don't think you really have to adapt this metaphor to non-English
> speakers. There may also be one or more languages where certain metaphor
> won't work well, but that doesn't mean you can't use it in all the other
> languages.
>
> IMO, it would be quite OK to simply add a huge L10N note explaining what
> Workspace is and how to see it in action. Localizers could then choose
> the appropriate terms for their locale, even if those terms would have
> little in common with the en-US metaphor.
The problem with this approach (which works fine in other cases) is
that I presume "Workspace" may end being a label in a button, so the
localization should not be too much longer. And "Workspace" is a
fairly short word for localization. If en-US uses "Workspace"
naturally in the UI and a good number of other languages have problem
localizing it without getting too long, we may have weird UIs in
several languages.
"JS Scrapbook" is slightly longer and may help a bit with
localization. In es-ES it could be translated to "Recortes de JS",
which has more or less the same length than en-US. Of course, this is
just an example, for other languages "JS Scrapbook" may not work any
better than "Workspace".
JM2C
Percy Cabello, Mozilla Perú
if don't want to tie it to a specific web scripting language) would be much
easier to localize.
Glad you took the time to ask for l10n feedback this early!
Dao
> The problem with this approach (which works fine in other cases) is
> that I presume "Workspace" may end being a label in a button
Why are you presuming this?
flod
> Why are you presuming this?
BTW (https://bug642176.bugzilla.mozilla.org/attachment.cgi?id=527213)
> +<menuitem id="appmenu_workspace"
> + hidden="true"
> + label="&workspace.label;"
> + key="key_workspace"
> + command="Tools:Workspace"/>
I agree with Ricardo: I can easily translate WorkSpace in my language,
but it will be quite long for a label ("spazio di lavoro") and I'm not
sure that people will understand what that command does.
As Percy suggested "Notepad" or "Editor" would be easier to localize,
but I'm not sure they describe the feature: to me it looks more like a
test area.
Francesco
Rob Campbell
Filed bug 653093 to contain the work.
Ricardo Palomares Martínez
As flod says, you usually need a menu option to access the feature,
and buttons are often used to provide quick access to common menu
options (for example, in custom toolbars).
The real problem would be that the button is not added right now, but
after some time, when the en-US term for the menu label has landed and
been localized to (in some cases) long strings that won't fit into a
button, whereas the en-US term will do.
Ricardo.
Rimas Kudelis
The point I tried to make in paragraph two is that if you had enough
knowledge what this thing named Workspace is, you could find the
appropriate wording for your locale. You could use "Recortes de JS" or
"Pikachu" or anything else that would make sense for your particular
language. It wouldn't have to be a direct translation of the word
"Workspace". Am I clear enough this time?
Rimas