Hi Together,
i’m just finished with the translation for the actual rt 3.8.x. I have
a “global” question for all german users regarding some wordings.
What do you think about translation for special words like:
Dashboard, Queue and Ticket. Should it be translated or should it be
like it is?
I’d translate these terms, but I’m not sure how to translate “Dashboard”
in RT’s context.
We’ve set our admin account to English since the RT book and the wiki
are written in English but I guess that most of our user’s would prefer
to get translated words.
Dashboard, Queue and Ticket. Should it be translated or should it be
like it is?
My experience is that it makes it easier not to translate Queue and
Ticket. I myself find it very confusing to explain anything to my
RT-Users about Stapel and not Queue. So, at least stay with Queue and
Ticket. Since I don’t know what the Dashboard in RT is, just leave it…
Regards,
Violetta
Vorstand/Board of Management:
Dr. Bernd Finkbeiner, Dr. Florian Geyer,
Dr. Roland Niemeier, Dr. Arno Steitz, Dr. Ingrid Zech
Vorsitzender des Aufsichtsrats/
Chairman of the Supervisory Board:
Prof. Dr. Hanns Ruder
Sitz/Registered Office: Tuebingen
Registergericht/Registration Court: Stuttgart
Registernummer/Commercial Register No.: HRB 382196
Dashboard, Queue and Ticket. Should it be translated or should it be
like it is?
My experience is that it makes it easier not to translate Queue and
Ticket. I myself find it very confusing to explain anything to my
RT-Users about Stapel and not Queue. So, at least stay with Queue and
Ticket. Since I don’t know what the Dashboard in RT is, just leave it…
What I would find most useful in the translation is keeping the Rights in their original English value. It is an administrative nightmare trying to manipulate rights in the German translation.
For example, “Take Ticket” and “Steal Ticket” are indistinguishable in the German translation (both “Ticket übernehmen”) and the sorting of the right fields is based on the English locale.
As for things like “Queue” or “Dashboard” I would find a sensible translation quite useful. The general 3.6 translation is not bad in that part, except that it has still a few errors. “[time] left” is translated as the direction left (as in move to the left) instead of its original temporal meaning. But these are a few minor concerns.
As for Dashboard I’d recommend something like “Arbeitsplätze” or “Übersichten” (note the plural). The literal translation (“Armaturenbrett / Instrumententafel”) of dashboard is not ideal. The words are only used in the context of real dashboards (as in a car or an airplane).
In total I find a sensible translation very helpful to the non-English speakers I am working here. The important part is that it needs to be sensible, and not just passing everything through an translation. The original translator definitely did not check his translation in the web site.
Naturally, any translation will both increase the bulk of the UI and introduce a bit of ambiguity. One cannot avoid this when translating, you can just try to minimize it.
The problem mentioned here is true for the technically adept. Those people (like myself, to be true) who prefer the original compact English UI. But this holds true only for the real IT power users. They can always keep the English UI active.
The more average people you have, the less their English skills are, the more problems you introduce by keeping the UI partly English. It is very important for them to have a clear translated UI. Only very domain specific phrases should be kept in English. Something like “Queue” with its real IT meaning isn’t well known. Most people, when reading it, will rather think of a Billard Queue.
The same holds true for “Dashboard”. Go out and ask a couple of Users what they would expect of a menu item called like that in a ticket system. Then ask then what they would expect from “Arbeitsplätze” or “Übersichten” instead.
Unfortunalety, I have no idea how to update the translations. Also I don’t know if the German translation is still maintained. If not, I might actually volunteer to help a bit here, if I can get some advise how the string tables are updated.
Yours,
Torben Nehmer
Torben Nehmer
Diplom Informatiker (FH)
Business System Developer
CANCOM Deutschland GmbH
Messerschmittstr. 20
89343 Scheppach
Germany
Tel.: +49 8225 - 996-1118
Fax: +49 8225 - 996-41118 torben.nehmer@cancom.de
CANCOM Deutschland GmbH
Sitz der Gesellschaft: Jettingen-Scheppach
HRB 10653 Memmingen
Geschäftsführer: Paul Holdschik, Christian Linder
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Dashboard, Queue and Ticket. Should it be translated or should it be
like it is?
My experience is that it makes it easier not to translate Queue and
Ticket. I myself find it very confusing to explain anything to my
RT-Users about Stapel and not Queue. So, at least stay with Queue and
Ticket. Since I don’t know what the Dashboard in RT is, just leave it…
What I would find most useful in the translation is keeping the Rights in their original English value. It is an administrative nightmare trying to manipulate rights in the German translation.
For example, “Take Ticket” and “Steal Ticket” are indistinguishable in the German translation (both “Ticket übernehmen”) and the sorting of the right fields is based on the English locale.
Sorting by English variant is a bug and it’s a nightmare for all
translations. I’ve created a bug report
(http://rt3.fsck.com/Ticket/Display.html?id=12343), if somebody
provide us a patch that would be great, shouldn’t be hard.
As for things like “Queue” or “Dashboard” I would find a sensible translation quite useful. The general 3.6 translation is not bad in that part, except that it has still a few errors. “[time] left” is translated as the direction left (as in move to the left) instead of its original temporal meaning. But these are a few minor concerns.
As for Dashboard I’d recommend something like “Arbeitsplätze” or “Übersichten” (note the plural). The literal translation (“Armaturenbrett / Instrumententafel”) of dashboard is not ideal. The words are only used in the context of real dashboards (as in a car or an airplane).
In russian translation we used “information panel” as the most close
description of Dashboards.
In total I find a sensible translation very helpful to the non-English speakers I am working here. The important part is that it needs to be sensible, and not just passing everything through an translation. The original translator definitely did not check his translation in the web site.
Naturally, any translation will both increase the bulk of the UI and introduce a bit of ambiguity. One cannot avoid this when translating, you can just try to minimize it.
The problem mentioned here is true for the technically adept. Those people (like myself, to be true) who prefer the original compact English UI. But this holds true only for the real IT power users. They can always keep the English UI active.
The more average people you have, the less their English skills are, the more problems you introduce by keeping the UI partly English. It is very important for them to have a clear translated UI. Only very domain specific phrases should be kept in English. Something like “Queue” with its real IT meaning isn’t well known. Most people, when reading it, will rather think of a Billard Queue.
The same holds true for “Dashboard”. Go out and ask a couple of Users what they would expect of a menu item called like that in a ticket system. Then ask then what they would expect from “Arbeitsplätze” or “Übersichten” instead.
Unfortunalety, I have no idea how to update the translations. Also I don’t know if the German translation is still maintained. If not, I might actually volunteer to help a bit here, if I can get some advise how the string tables are updated.
No string tables, it’s just a file lib/RT/I18N/de.po and make regenerate-catalogs make target you can use to fresh all files with
new strings from the source.
Hi Björn,
I think i will go the way to NOT translate all the things. As i read from all the answers it makes no sense, some “denglisch” wordings are ok.
OK, i’m nearly finished with the translation (with the new updates from Emmanuel).
For the Rights Translations i agree with Andreas, Violetta and Torben that i makes no sense to translate, Torben is right, this is a nightmare if you are at the admin panel.
Btw. Administration:
I’m thinking about NOT to translate the whole Admin Part, because like Andreas said, ist confusing more if you work together with the book or the wiki and you have all the time to translate back from german to english and i think, someone who will administrate rt should know a little about english…
OK, actual Status: i will sent to BPS the whole translation (including admin and installation) but offer also at my homepage some different versions and try to keep them up2date.
Torsten
Kühne + Nagel (AG & Co.) KG, Geschäftsleitung: Hans-Georg Brinkmann (Vors.), Uwe Bielang (Stellv.), Bruno Mang, Dirk Blesius (Stellv.), Alfred Manke, Christian Marnetté (Stellv.), Mark Reinhardt (Stellv.), Jens Wollesen, Rainer Wunn, Sitz: Bremen, Registergericht: Bremen, HRA 21928, USt-IdNr.: DE 812773878, Persönlich haftende Gesellschaft: Kühne & Nagel A.G., Sitz: Contern/Luxemburg Geschäftsführender Verwaltungsrat: Klaus-Michael Kühne
Von: Bjoern Schulz [mailto:bjoern.schulz@desy.de]
Gesendet: Dienstag, 19. August 2008 16:16
An: Ham MI-ID, Torsten Brumm
Betreff: Re: [rt-users] RT 3.8.x Translation - Question for German Users
Hallo Torsten,
ich hab mal bei meinen “deitschen” Nuztern nachgefragt.
Maybe it’s too late now for an answer but in our company most people use
the German GUI and mostly they use the following terms while talking
about tickets:
Ticket = Ticket (almost never “Anfragen”)
Queue = Bereich/Queue
I also like the idea of Torben to translate the Dashboard to
"�bersichten". Maybe you can extend it to “Pers�nliche �bersichten” to
tell the user that this will be his own setting.
And I totally agree with keeping the rights in English. But I don’t mind
since I’m using the English version anyway…
Another thing I’d like to be changed would be the menu “Anfragen”.
Nobody expects the ticket search there. Since the menu above is called
"Vereinfachte Suche" I’d like the menu “Anfragen” to be called
"Erweiterte Suche" or similar. Also “Wiedervorlage” (in English
"Reminders") would be better translated to “Erinnerung” imho.
Maybe some other people can think of more improvements on the
translation too.