Bug 16912 - Tighten up UI-strings
Summary: Tighten up UI-strings
Status: RESOLVED FIXED
Alias: None
Product: PackageKit
Classification: Unclassified
Component: General (show other bugs)
Version: unspecified
Hardware: Other All
: medium normal
Assignee: Richard Hughes
QA Contact:
URL:
Whiteboard:
Keywords: i18n
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2008-07-30 16:22 UTC by Kenneth Nielsen
Modified: 2012-01-23 04:57 UTC (History)
1 user (show)

See Also:
i915 platform:
i915 features:


Attachments

Description Kenneth Nielsen 2008-07-30 16:22:49 UTC
Hey everybody

When I was proofreading the Danish translation of gnome-packagekit I stumbled on some UI-strings that I think would benefit from a different form, and so I thought that I would make a bug report about it. Please remember that I am by no means a UI or programming expert so feel free to ignore this if you do not agree.

=== Strings with "we" ===
Generally, I do not think it is appropriate for a program to refer to itself in first person plural and I know that it is not used in a lot of other programs, even if they are just gconf-strings. You may want to consider reformulating these in a bit more formal tone. There are a lot of these strings so I'll just paste a few

#: ../data/gnome-packagekit.schemas.in.h:5
msgid "How often we should check for updates"

#: ../data/gnome-packagekit.schemas.in.h:7
msgid "How often we should refresh the package cache"

=== Short/Lazy sentences ===
I know that in UI's it is important to keep strings short, but unless it is absoluely necessary the following kind of strings actually could be transformed into proper english by adding a "is" or a "for"

#: ../src/gpk-common.c:290
msgid "Package identifier not valid"

#: ../src/gpk-common.c:925
msgid "Searching details"

#: ../src/gpk-common.c:931
msgid "Searching groups"

#: ../src/gpk-common.c:1031
msgid "Searched groups"

#: ../src/gpk-application.c:2213
msgid "Install selected package"

#: ../src/gpk-application.c:2233
msgid "Remove selected package"

/gpk-application.c:2251
msgid "Visit homepage for selected package"

=== Short to the point where they are hard to understand ===
These I did not know how to translate. Either make them longer or add translator comments

#: ../src/gpk-common.c:919
msgid "Getting requires"

#: ../src/gpk-common.c:976
msgid "Getting what provides"

#: ../src/gpk-common.c:1019
msgid "Got requires"

#: ../src/gpk-common.c:1079
msgid "Got what provides"

=== Comments would be nice ===

In these three it would be nice with a comment stating whether they are describing something you can choose to do or something it is doing

#: ../src/gpk-application.c:1475
msgid "Searching by name"

#: ../src/gpk-application.c:1496
msgid "Searching by description"

#: ../src/gpk-application.c:1517
msgid "Searching by file"

Regards Kenneth Nielsen
Comment 1 Richard Hughes 2008-07-31 10:22:37 UTC
Hey Kenneth!

I very much appreciate this bug; I'm useless at English grammar, and need all the help I can get. Would you be interested changing these translations yourself and committing the result? I can help you through checking out the source and making the changes.
Comment 2 Richard Hughes 2008-10-13 06:25:46 UTC
Ping?
Comment 3 Kenneth Nielsen 2008-10-13 09:42:02 UTC
Ahh damn. Sorry I forgot about this one. Yes I would like to give a hand. Actually it wasn't as much the english grammar as the formality of the language I was referring to, but I wouldn't mind helping.

If you send me the commands for how I check out the source (unless off course, this is the module listed as gnome-packagekit in gnome svn, then I know how to check it out) and extract a patch I can send to you afterwards, then I will have a look at it.

I don't really know the software that well, so I will probably need to ask a lot of questions, but we can deal with that as it comes.

Regards Kenneth Nielsen
Comment 4 Richard Hughes 2008-10-13 12:15:25 UTC
(In reply to comment #3)
> listed as gnome-packagekit in gnome svn, then I know how to
> check it out) and extract a patch I can send to you afterwards, then I will
> have a look at it.

Yup, you can use gnome to submit translation stuff, or even just use (better) "git clone git://people.freedesktop.org/~hughsient/gnome-packagekit"

If you have any questions (and I hope you do!) please email the mailing list and I'll answer back there.

Thanks dude, much appreciated.
Comment 5 Kenneth Nielsen 2012-01-23 04:57:48 UTC
Hey

Sorry about never getting around to doing anything about this. But I can see that someone else added a lot of comments for these strings and others.

Regards Kenneth


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