Re: Acronym on About page of main site
On 20/06/2005, at 3:30 AM, Jutta Wrage wrote:
Birds Of a Feather is defined as slang, but slang is not that, what
people use (learn) normally, if not native speakers.
Being open for everyone means not use slang or insider terms where
not necessary.
I agree completely, Jutta. Idiom, especially local idiom or jargon,
is almost the last thing you learn in another language, and it
develops all the time, with lots of local variations, so in most
cases it's not worth putting in the effort to try and master it. You
may find it worth mastering the idiom used in your day-to-day
situations, but it won't necessarily transfer to other situations, or
even to the same situations in another locality using the same language.
I really like the Wiki feature which gives you a tooltip explaining
acronyms. How difficult would it be to implement something like that
on the main D-W site? Different software, I know...
There is a Japanese plugin for Firefox, for example, which will pop
up translation tooltips between English and Japanese (and I think the
other way, too) for words and phrases on webpages. Is there anything
for acronyms?
Unless we can provide that sort of support, we should probably
explain any common acronyms where everyone is likely to see them (the
acronym dictionary link on the main site is a great feature), and on
the list, only use ones we have explained. Even then, new people are
going to be puzzled sometimes...
from Clytie (vi-VN, Vietnamese free-software translation team / nhóm
Việt hóa phần mềm tự do)
Clytie Siddall--Renmark, in the Riverland of South Australia
Ở thành phố Renmark, tại miền sông của Nam Úc
Reply to: