Re: en_GB - Let's not miss these opportunities

[Chris Leonard <cjlhomeaddress gmail com>]

On Wed, Sep 5, 2012 at 8:20 AM, Bruce Cowan <bruce bcowan me uk> wrote:
> Forwarded to the list because I pressed the wrong button.
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Bruce Cowan <bruce bcowan me uk>
> Date: 5 September 2012 12:36
> Subject: Re: en_GB - Let's not miss these opportunities
> To: Chris Leonard <cjlhomeaddress gmail com>
>
>
> On 5 September 2012 09:40, Chris Leonard <cjlhomeaddress gmail com> wrote:
>> Dear en_GB localizers,
>>
>> One of the great advantages of the relatively simple "translation" of
>> en_us POT files into en_GB is that it gives you the opportunity to do
>> much needed proofreading of the original en_US strings.
>
> Yes, I was meaning to start earlier this cycle in order to do this,
> but I have been quite busy recently.

No worries.  Busy is a standard condition for most FOSS contributors :-)

>> I've encountered a few instances where typographical errors in the
>> en_US original were simply corrected in the en_GB PO file, but no i18n
>> bug had been filed against the package.
>>
>> vino (UPnP)
>> https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=683387
>>
>> There was another example in avahi "occured > occurred"
>>
>> When you encounter these typograhical errors while going through en_GB
>> PO files (I'm not talking about the common orthographic variations,
>> but genuine typos), please do not simply make the correction in the
>> en_GB PO without filing the i18n bug.  If you don't want to take the
>> time to file the i18n bug, that is fine, but please leave the string
>> untranslated and someone like me will get around to translating it
>> later (after filing the i18n bug).
>
> There's a tool in the gnome-i18n repository called en_GB.pl. You can
> use en_GB.pl --check to get a list of differences between the expected
> en_GB strings and the translations used. It misses a few ("ize" ->
> "ise"), but it's very useful for this sort of thing.

Bruce, yes, I do use the output of en_GB.pl as a reference for the
common word substitutions (trash > wastebasket) and the standard
transliterations.  I still prefer an eyes-on approach to look for
possible i18n improvements.

I believe the OLPC Australia builds may use the en_GB packages (they
have 53,000 XOs) and I know that many XO laptops are used in schools
where English is the "language of instruction" and so I personally
feel that time spent on improving the en-US strings to a generally
high level of grammatical and orthographic correctness is worth the
effort.

cjl