Re: Do "enabled", "disabled", and "not found" need to be qualified per instance?

[Petr Kovar <pmkovar gnome org>]

Hi!

Joanmarie Diggs <joanmarie diggs gmail com>, Sat, 15 May 2010 15:18:41
-0400:

> Hey all.
> 
> Silly question: Do "enabled", "disabled", and "not found" need to be
> qualified per instance?
> 
> More context: Orca speaks and brailles various confirmation messages
> when the user changes a setting on the fly or executes certain commands.
> Examples:
> 
> User: enables/disables speech temporarily
> Orca: "speech {enabled,disabled}
> 
> User: enables/disables indentation and justification info temporarily
> Orca: "Speaking of indentation and justification {enabled,disabled}
> 
> User: Attempts to move to the next heading, but there isn't a next one
> Orca: "No more headings found"
> 
> User: Attempts to move to the next list, but there isn't a next one
> Orca: "No more lists found"
> 
> Etc., etc.
> 
> Some users like a lot of detail. But for experienced users and/or users
> with really small braille displays, some of these strings are
> unnecessarily long. Therefore, we're going to start providing optional,
> brief messages.
> 
> User: enables/disables whatever by giving the command to do so
> Orca: "{enabled,disabled}"
> 
> User: Attempts to move to the next whatever, but there isn't a next one
> Orca: "not found"
> 
> Will the translation of "enabled", "disabled", and "not found" vary in
> some languages depending on what was enabled, disabled, or not found?

Absolutely, since there exists something we call grammatical gender in many
many languages:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_gender
 
However, as long as those adjectives like "enabled" or "disabled" aren't
incorporated into a sentence or sentence fragment, but are placed in a
string of their own, it's often the case in i18n not to qualify per
instance and respect various gender and declension forms, but to use
a "general, one-gender, one-case" term that refers to all strings with the
appropriate meaning. (In my West Slavic language [Czech], we often make use
of the neuter gender singular nominative case for that purpose.)
Nevertheless, I wouldn't count that in best i18n/l10n practices, really.

In the end, a context is what counts the most for translators. Also, I
think that Orca is the excellent example of providing a good portion of
useful context information to their translators, so thanks for that.

> Apologies for being a stereotypical, monolingual American. And thanks in
> advance for your help!

Thanks for keeping i18n in mind. It's highly appreciated!

Regards,
Petr Kovar