Re: translation of the word factory...

[Malcolm Tredinnick <malcolm commsecure com au>]

On Wed, 2003-09-03 at 20:34, Danilo Segan wrote:
> среда, 03. септембар 2003. 11:47:32 CEST — Malcolm Tredinnick написа:
> > >
> > > > And the strings finally get a meaning!!!
> > > > What do you think of it? It's a widespread mistake I think, but
> > > > if I am wrong correct me...
> > 
> > I think you are wrong (see below). :-)
> 
> Heyoo, I didn't say that one :-P

Sorry, I accidently cut out one of the attribution lines. The correct
level of quoting is still there, but it does look like I was correcting
the wrong person. My apologies. 

> 
> > > It seems to me to be a CORBA terminology (I'll have to check) --
> > > which means that it's a word with *new meaning assigned*, so I
> > > believe it's up to translators to choose any word suitable for
> > > their language.
> > 
> > It's not really new to CORBA. Factory functions (or classes) and
> > factory patterns have been around for a while.
> >
> 
> I never said that it was "new to CORBA", but rather, that it's a term  
> that has gotten new meaning when it got used in CORBA (before that, it  
> never had the meaning of "producers of application instances",  
> right? ;-).

Not really. Factory functions or constructors, for example, have been
around for a long time (I'm no computer language historian, so I will
not chance my arm by saying when they first appeared). Those are the
types of functions you call which return another function specialised
for your use. But we have veered wildly off track here and I do have
something substantive to add further on... 

> > At the risk of pouring oil onto the fire, let me add a technical
> > viewpoint: the "factory" objects in CORBA and bonobo and friends are
> > producers of application instances. They are the "mother ship" from
> > which instances of the server pour forth to perform work.
> > 
> > So the "producing factory" sense is correct here.
> >
> 
> And in translations, I think simply "producers" could be suitable as  
> well (I did it that way in Serbian :-).
> 
> Another suggestion for *translators* could be "providers" (they  
> "provide" clients with instances -- those who produce, also provide  
> others with that products) -- if that term can be appropriately  
> translated.

Agreed.

> > However, that does not get around the issue, as has been noted, that
> > this is a highly technical term. Factory objects and classes and
> > functions are not really in common use outside computer science. So  
> > if we are exposing the term to users in more places than just the -- 
> > help string of gnome-terminal and a couple of error messages, there  
> > is a bug report or two required for some future GNOME releases.
> 
> I'll attach a simple result of "grep" for factory in current releases  
> (both core Gnome desktop, and other software -- but only those that I  
> have translated to Serbian [most of them are]).
> 
> So, there you go -- anyone looking forward to handling these? ;-)
> 
> Though, they don't seem to be so numerous, and I've never seen them  
> actually (they might be showing in terminal when eg. Nautilus embeds  
> Epiphany, or something like that).

Almost every single one of thos occurences are in places like the
description string of Bonobo server description files. These are the
files that end up in ${prefix}/lib/bonobo/servers/.

So not all desktop users are going to see them. However, if you were
using a graphical bonobo server browser (there used to be one -- the
name escapes me presently), having the translated (and correct) string
show up is a benefit, since it describes the purpose of the server.

Translating these strings can be seen as an investment in a future that
isn't quite here yet. I don't believe having them marked for translation
is wrong, but neither is it any kind of show-stopping bug if one was not
so marked.

Cheers,
Malcolm