Re: emdebian-rootfs 2.0.2: Please translate the package emdebian-rootfs

[Américo Monteiro <a_monteiro@netcabo.pt>]

Hi

A Domingo 16 Agosto 2009 17:17:06 Neil Williams você escreveu:
> Dear Debian I18N people,
>
> I would like to know if some of you would be interested in translating
> the emdebian-rootfs manpages. (See recent discussion on debian-devel and
> changes in Policy 3.8.3)
>
> emdebian-rootfs manpages currently have no translations.
>
> Please note that manpage translation is a significantly more challenging
> task than debconf or program translations due to the number and size of
> the strings and the need to attain a cohesive manpage. (If users need to
> refer to the English manpage to understand the translated one, there's
> little point in the translation.)

Then you should have provided the entire text to translation and not these 
disjoin strings:

debconfs are easy to translate because they usually have entire phrases to 
translate, and you people should know that translating a phrase from english 
to other language requires changing the words order in most cases...
for example the phrase
driving a yellow car 
the translation to portuguese require the yellow<>car words to switch places 
in the phrase.

in this template you have (strings 309 to 311)
    needs the 
/bin/sh
 option.

for this translation to make sense in portuguese, the "option" should became 
before the "/bin/sh"... and this is just an example, there are more like this 
within the template.

another problem in this template is that you have some strings ending with 
"the "
the what? is the "what" singular or plural? male or female?
not knowing these details we can never give you good translations.

i am beguining to translate this template, but i'm not sure if i'll going to 
finish it at all, because no matter what i do, the portuguese translations will 
allways be a messy one...

if you guys start to give us the entire texts to translate, maybe it would 
take longer to translate, but the result will be much better and there won't 
be the danger that users won't understand the translated text, and i know this 
situation doesn't affect only the portuguese language, if affects many others 
too.

best regards
Américo Monteiro