Re: Translating BOF Was: Acronym on About page of main site
On Mon, 2005-06-20 at 13:01 +0200, Jutta Wrage wrote:
>
> 1. BOF -> Birds Of a Feather -> Gleichgesinnte -> (BOF) In den 60er
> und siebziger Jahren bürgerte sich der Slang-Begriff "Birds Of a
> Feather" für Gruppen von Gleichgesinnten ein, die sich zu bestimmten
> Themen auf Veranstaltungen und Konferenzen im Unix-Umfeld
> zusammenfanden.
> 2. BOFFT -> Birds Of a Feather Flock Together -> Gleich und Gleich
> gesellt sich gern -> (no gloss entry)
> 3. - BOF meeting -> Treffen Gleichgesinnter -> no gloss entry
>
> I am quite convinced that I will have to integrate acronyms in the
> glossaries, too. But that needs a bit brainstorming how to solve it
> in the program, making the files for dictd and the web pages.
Well, in general usage, most people use BOF like its a word rather than
as a true acronym (just like LCD, DVD or GSM), even to the extent were
'BOF meeting' seems incorrect usage to me, as a BOF *is* a meeting, as
far as I'm concerned... The expansion of BOF to 'Birds of (a) Feather'
is simply an interesting explanation for its origin, and bears little
relevance to its actual usage (just like GSM was originally "Groupe
Speciale Mobile", but nowadays is expanded as "Global System for Mobile
Communications" as the acronym's usage expanded past its original
meaning.)
I would suggest that you consider leaving BOF untranslated, and giving
an description of its usage and an explanation of its origin in the
dict. I found a french definitio of BOF which basically does this:
http://www.tout-savoir.net/lexique.php?rub=definition&code=1047
A translation of http://computing-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Birds
%20Of%20a%20Feather would probably also suffice.
Hope that helps a bit,
Rob Taylor
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