Re: Translating "yes" and "no" as answers to specific questions

[Sean Burke <leftmostcat gmail com>]

Scríobh Claude Paroz:
> Couldn't you find a way to rephrase the question in the translation so
> as the answer is always the generic yes and no?
>   
Speaking for Irish, I'm not sure this is always possible, even in a 
stilted fashion (as Thomas mentions). The best approximations to "Yes" 
and "No" that the Irish translators (for Firefox and KDE as well) have 
come up with so far translate as "It is" and "It isn't". It would 
certainly make every yes-or-no question awkward and I'm certain there 
are a few that can't be rephrased into something both sensible and correct.

For that matter, this problem isn't isolated to GTK+ software. This same 
problem exists in KDE. It seems to me like it would be better to address 
this outside of GTK+ but this again brings up the problem of "Is this 
worth it for the Celtic languages alone?" Certainly it's more than two 
but not by much. Still, the resulting translations are very awkward and 
I think it needs to be addressed somehow. If accurate translations are 
impossible, something's wrong. Perhaps a more generic solution could be 
found that fixes similar problems in other languages.


Seán de Búrca