On Friday 09 March 2007, Steve Langasek wrote:
> Can I ask why a number of sentences in the English text that were phrased
> as requests have been turned into questions in the translation?
sure, basically that's the result of a discussion on debian-l10n-dutch back
in september 2003. Brief overview of the consensus in that discussion is
that:
- the literal translation of the "Please select/enter ..." (which we started
with) has to formal a connotation for most people, making it sound weird
when written (at least in most places, that's less so in the middle of a
paragraph).
- Leaving out the please in the translation is also undesirable as that
makes it an imperative, where it's a polite request/gentle direction (when
speaking you'd add inflection to make that clear, but that is obviously
not possible in writing)
-> the best solution in most cases seems to be to make it a question form
I'm curious, and a bit puzzled though. gcide defines request as:
1. The act of asking for anything desired; expression of
desire or demand; solicitation; prayer; petition;
entreaty.
[1913 Webster]
so I would expect going from request -> question would be a style issue
mostly, but since you asked about it I'm guessing there's some subtle
difference to a native speaker?
--
Cheers, cobaco (aka Bart Cornelis)
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