geeky/clumsy messages/translations

[martin.quinson@free.fr]

Sorry, I don't like previous title ;)

Selon Colin Watson <cjwatson@debian.org>:

> On Thu, Jul 01, 2004 at 02:06:15AM +0900, Changwoo Ryu wrote:
> > Yes, But some English messages are already too geeky to be translated
> > for non-geeks..
> > 
> > "Failed to dup()/wait3()", "Core dumped", "Failed to listen/bind a
> > socket in function()"; even English natives don't understand what these
> > mean without some Unix programming experiences.  As a translator, I'd
> > like to see more non-geek-friendly English msgids.   There were no way
> > to avoid clumsyness, while translating such messages.
> 
> On the other hand, those messages can be very useful in bug reports.
> There's a balance to be struck here.

Some programs do not try to translate the debugging messages, since their
intendend audiance is not the user, but the developers (who have to speak
english anyway).

I think it's a good idea to have something like:
 printf("%s%s",gettext("Error while establishing the <application> daemon.\n")
              ,gettext("Error details: "));
 printf("bind() returned %d (%s)\n",errno, perror(errno));
Only the first message needs to be translated, IMHO.

Or, for a graphical application, having a newbie-proof and translated message in
the error popup, and a "details" button showing some debugging untranslated bits.

The dpkg (or even worse, gcc) po files may shrink by half with this idea. But
that's a very difficult and time consuming task. You have to know very well the
application to distinguish between two categories of messages, and the limit
between them have to be standardized accross the system. As a result, such
changes seem to imply a closer cooperative work between translators and
developers...


Thanks for your time, Mt.