Standards for translations?

[Ronald de Man <deman win tue nl>]

Hello,

After looking at some of the translations, I have some questions, mainly
about menu items.

For example, most File menus have an "Open" entry. In the Dutch, French,
and German translations, this is replaced by "Openen", "Ouvrir", and
"Öffnen", respectively. So apparently, the infinitive of the verb
is taken. My question: Is it anywhere stated that this is the desired
translation?

Personally, I view menu entries as commands. When I click File->Open,
I tell the program to open a file for me. Consequently, my preferred
translations would be "Open" and "Öffne" for Dutch and German (ack...
I'm a bit uncertain about the correct French right now).

At some places my preffered translation is given, at most places
one has chosen for the other option. Above all, I think the translations
should be consistent in this respect.

Ah, although my knowledge of Norwegian is extremely limited, I understand
enough of it to see that the Norwegian translator of gnome-libs
shares my preferred way of translating menu items (Åpne). I have the
impression that the same holds for the Spanish translator (Abrir) and
the Italian tranlator (Abri).

Another inconsistency is in the use of capitals. Should every word
occurring in a menu item be capitalized or not. This might depend
on the language in question. At the moment, even the original English
versions are inconsistent. (For example, games have "New game", but
most programs have "Open File" and similar.)

I'm interested to hear what other people think about this.

Ronald