Re: Should we really translate legal notices?

[Petr Kovar <pmkovar gnome org>]

Hi!

Luca Ferretti <lferrett gnome org>, Fri, 11 Jun 2010 18:49:37 +0200:

> Il giorno gio, 10/06/2010 alle 18.34 +0200, Wouter Bolsterlee ha
> scritto:
> > Op donderdag 10-06-2010 om 13:08 uur [tijdzone +0200], schreef Luca
> > Ferretti:
> > > Il giorno mar, 08/06/2010 alle 20.13 -0700, Luis Villa ha scritto:
> > > > I definitely recommend doing this through the toolkit so that the
> > > > text remains consistent throughout the platform.
> > > 
> > > Did someone yet filed a bug against gtk+/glib?
> > 
> > Earlier in this thread (message from May 19) I referenced this bug:
> > https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=336225
> > 
> 
> Just a consideration. Then we should need 2 translatable messages: one
> in glib for console/terminal only application using "show c"/"show w"
> command reported earlier, one in gtk+ for GUI applications providing
> links.

For what it's worth, I'm afraid that there is more to that... Note that
legal texts/notices also appear accross the GNOME documentation, and there
are even modules with translation set up for free software licenses.
Obviously, I'm talking about the gnome-desktop module:

http://l10n.gnome.org/module/gnome-desktop/

I don't have any idea on how many of those license translations have been
prepared by legal experts, but I'd rather guess it's mostly a community
work, so quite problematic with regard to the legal topic.

I assume that the safest approach from a legal point of view would be to
drop these community translations and use the English original instead.

And something similar should probably be recommended for any legal text or
notice out there, unless translation team can be provided with expert
translations. Having said that, I'm not sure whether using two legal
notices, one in English and one localized, is feasible with regard to UI
design & usability.

My 5 kreutzers,
Petr Kovar