[Foundation-l] Translations fundraising.wikimedia.org

[Lars Aronsson]

Aphaia wrote:

> Again, "the pun is one of most difficulties for translation".
> There are at least two ways to deal with:

C.O.R.E. is not a pun, because it isn't funny.  I'm not laughing 
when I see this user interface and this translation request.  
Most importantly, the translation request on meta doesn't provide 
any context, not even a link back to the website 
fundraising.wikimedia.org.

I made the Swedish translation of http://www.citeulike.org/
and that work was a dream, because of how the user interface was 
designed.  It was the wiki principle applied to a UI.  I was 
browsing the real website, never out of context, but every phrase 
had an edit link.  There is a lot to learn from there.

The existing Swedish translation, made by two anonymous editors, 
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_C.O.R.E./sv
has at least two obvious spelling errors (that any spellchecker 
would reveal) and several phrases that just sound stupid.  But 
worse than that, since no context is provided I cannot determine 
if "Count" is supposed to be the verb or the noun, and if "Total" 
is supposed to be the adjective (and what gender) or the noun 
(total sum, grand total), so I cannot tell if the current 
translations are OK or plain wrong.  I have to flip between the 
website and the phrase list, in a very frustrating hunt.  The 
first phrase in the list is the longest and hardest ("Discloses 
fundraising data while preserving requested donor privacy."), but 
I cannot find this phrase in the live user interface.  Since one 
of the blatant spelling errors is in that phrase, I see no point 
in fixing the spelling error while letting the rest of the overly 
complicated phrase stand ("medans donatorns privatliv bevaras" 
is worse than child language).

On the website fundraising.wikimedia.org, the first phrase on the 
page is "Wikimedia Fundraising C.O.R.E." and I am allowed to 
translate "Fundraising C.O.R.E.", but I cannot translate the next 
line "Central Online Reporting Engine", so I suppose that phrase 
will continue to appear in English?!  And the non-Swedish word 
Fundraising is already in the URL, so there is little point in 
trying to translate "Fundraising C.O.R.E.".

Judging from the French and Czech translations of the website, the 
phrases "Coming soon: RSS feeds and maybe an IRC bot", "We're 
working on translating this site into multiple languages. You can 
help." and "Languages" still appear in English, as does the 
navigation bar with "Gift Policy" and "Old Fundraising Records"

I give up.


-- 
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se