Upfront German Usage Check

translationfound translationfound at gmail.com
Fri Jul 29 13:52:48 CDT 2005


Hello Translator Team German:

when going through the archive, this message by Johannes Fahrenkrug
struck a chord:
http://svn.haxx.se/dev/archive-2004-06/0164.shtml

>>I am just proofreading ch09.xml from Gerhard. I am wondering: How
much of the English terms should we keep and how many should we
translate? For example: »diff engine« translates to
»Unterschieds-Methode«. I think that's very confusing. Someone who
uses Subversion knows what a diff tool is. And I think it's more
confusing to translate common utility and system names into German
than to just keep them in English.<<

And the answer:
http://svn.haxx.se/dev/archive-2004-06/0274.shtml

It is possible to research German  usage of specific terms, and to
find out, where words are better left in English and where they are
better being translated. Since readers of an SVN book will be an
advanced audience there is a greater flexibility to stay with the
English term, whenever it really sounds and feels better -  than would
be is for a general audience.

The overall idea is, however, to ~streamline~ usage, hence my
suggestion to create a working glossary. So what I want to do is this:
collate key words in English, and then map them with one ore several
instances of usage in German. I have done this for other software and 
user guide  projects and it worked well, and I do feel strongly about
introducing a well balanced terminology  avoiding both  - too many
terms kept in English and too little - because this has happened too
many times before. Like I think "mergen", for to "merge" is a bit
rich, but then again it's worth mentioning it for  discussion. Because
it's out there.

So my plan is to submit these to the list for commenting. 

Greetings 
Gisela
http://translationfound.blogspot.com




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