Christian Perrier wrote: (...)
Just let me take a reference I often use even though some people around won't like it : Microsoft Windows localisation. I thinks that most serious people (I mean people which are grown up enough and forget about "MiKroSofT Suckz") will agree that MS Windows localisation is quite professionnal and generally well written (generally.....I have counter examples for French, but very few) and, geesh, I daily work with MS Windows, blame me. I have never ever seen any MS Windows screen use the 2nd singular person when translating "you blahblah".....never.
I must say I've not been shocked by MS Windows french version, but I've been quite shocked by the japanese one. Not because of formal/informal issues, but because of vocabular. Most of the basic stuff, like "My computer", "My documents", etc. are just raw english written with japanese characters. Would you imagine having "My computer", "My documents", etc. on your french desktop ? I don't. And I doubt that such translations will help japanese newbies to understand what's going on. I'm personnally much more annoyed by these terminology problems than by the formal/informal issues, but I'm not a native of the language. Well, the strange thing is that I think I wouldn't like if my computer would start to 'tutoie' me (use 'tu' instead of 'vous'), but I don't really care if it uses the 'neutral' form in japanese... in fact I must say I feel strange when my computer uses the 'modesty' form (謙譲語)... I don't know how japanese people feel about that...
(...)
Indeed, in good documentation AND in user interaction in our software, I have found that the best written screens or documentations are the ones which use these concepts we use in scientific papers writing.
I agree with that.
And, also, sometimes learning lessons from MS Windows is not that bad. The French team sometimes refers to MS Windows ways to translate things. And this ends up in not that bad work....:)
I think the best thing is to learn from any other OS/software/whatever. One of the purposes of translators is not to loose users into terminology, right ? So, using the same terminology as other OS/software/whatever (be it Mac OS, MS Windows, QNX...) helps the user. Languages contain so many synonymous...
MikePS: just in case it's not clear, despite my english-looking name, I'm a native speaker of french.