Re: translating font names

[Christian Rose <menthos gnome org>]

ons 2003-09-03 klockan 21.08 skrev Guntupalli Karunakar:
>  Should font names like 'Sans', 'Serif' , 'monospace' etc be
> translated? or could they be transliterated? going through some
> languages I see
> "Serif"
> "serifinlangxyz (Serif)"
> "serifinlangxyz"

The names "Serif", "Sansserif", and "Monospace" are not font names per
se, but on the other hand commonly used in typography as the names of
*different types of fonts* for the Latin script.

Serif fonts are fonts that use special endings in the lines of each
character, called serifs. For example, the letter "T" in a Serif font
doesn't just look like two straight lines, but the horisontal bar has
two (sometimes slightly curved) endings, and the vertical line has a
(sometimes sligthly curved) "foot". Serif fonts are commonly considered
more readable on paper.

Sansserif fonts are fonts that do not use these special endings on the
character lines: "sans" is "without", so these are fonts that are
without serifs. A "T" in a sansserif font looks like two straight lines,
without any special endings. Sansserif fonts are commonly considered
more readable on computer screens.

Monospace fonts are fonts where each character has the same width.

How are these used in GNOME? Some applications that display large
amounts of text, for example a web browser, can render text in different
contexts, or allow for the user to change between different types of
fonts depending on the user's preferences. A web browser needs a
fixed-width font to render <tt></tt> and <pre></pre> sections, and the
user might prefer serif fonts or sansserif ones. So the application
allows the user to specify one font of each kind.


In Swedish, "Serif fonts" is called "seriftypsnitt" according to what I
could find out in typography, so the "Serif" -> "Serif" translation was
no problem. The same for sansserif, we also use "sansserif" in Swedish.

"Monospace" was more of a problem, I couldn't find a good translation
for that one. So I use "typsnitt med fast breddsteg", i.e. "fixed-width
font".


To sum this up, these are different types of fonts, so I don't think
these terms should just let be untranslated or simply transcribed. The
terms probably have an established translation in typography that could
be used.

Hope this helps,


Christian