Shoutbox

They will hurt us .



...But seriously, Cookie if you read this... Give Patchou or me an update on the Dutch languagefile (preferably Patchou). If you don't have enough time, then maybe I can finish it? If you're still gonna finish it, than at least give a quick message and let us know you're alive.

I'm starting to worry because you never seem to be online anymore .

I'm pretty sure we need not worry about Cookie...he posts here and there and every now and then i see him appear (log in) on msn. If anything Cookie is incredibly busy (i think) in his job as theater technician...we may need to worry about him beeing way too busy (lurking burnout, starting to forget things) tho as i do lots of times (but blah i'm female, we tend to worry too much).

Surely he will meet the deadlines *fingers crossed*.

I'm still as much alive as I was the last time I left a quick message regarding the translation though...


But indeed I don't have much time to roam the forums as I used to, the time I have mostly goes to the translation.

But I can say one thing: although the overall dialogs are bigger than before, the actual controls on them are quite often waaaay smaller (and quite often without any reason... aka much unused but unavailable white space) making it absolutely hard, and in some cases totally impossible, to make a consistent and decent translation.

man, thats bad news...

Im sure that if cookie can't do it others can.... we have an army of really dodgy dutch people...

Menthix, Sunnie, Tochjo, Fanta, Mippo, etc....

Cookie Just remember to contact me when you think you need help.

quote:

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Originally posted by CookieRevised
But I can say one thing: although the overall dialogs are bigger than before, the actual controls on them are quite often waaaay smaller (and quite often without any reason... aka much unused but unavailable white space) making it absolutely hard, and in some cases totally impossible, to make a consistent and decent translation.

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well, it's too bad you never told me about it then. I've fixed a lot of stuff based on translator's feedback since the beginning of the processus.

quote:

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Originally posted by CookieRevised
But I can say one thing: although the overall dialogs are bigger than before, the actual controls on them are quite often waaaay smaller (and quite often without any reason... aka much unused but unavailable white space) making it absolutely hard, and in some cases totally impossible, to make a consistent and decent translation.

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Totally agreed. Just have a look at MSN Messenger's own preferences - their translators appear to have tons of space to make correct translations compared to us (and they're the professionals ). An example: In the Danish MSN Messenger beta they always refer to 'contacts' as 'kontaktpersoner'. In Plus it's most of the time only possible to make room for 'kontakter' which in Danish isn't quite the same thing.

quote:

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Originally posted by Patchou
I've fixed a lot of stuff based on translator's feedback since the beginning of the processus.

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I reported that there isn't enough space for the official Danish translation of 'Away' in the RadAway key in [Window.PersoStatus]; you ain't fixed that.

Btw this also goes for RadAway in [Window.PersoStatusSettings].

lol, so you wanna compare th way the translation is done for Plus! and the way it's done for Messenger? the Microsoft way is the best by far (as it gives translators control over the complete interface) but it would probably require 5 times more work, especially for upgrades, including minor ones and I'm not about to ask every translator to work full time all year long on my punny addon.

I can't fix space issues for every language, I never could and I never will. However, I'm doing my best to accomodate the 20 translator's teams and for that to happen, I need to know when there is a problem. From the feedback I've had in general, nobody seems particularly bothered with space issues, at least, not more than with Messenger Plus! 3 if you consider the proportion of requested compared to the amount ot stuff that had to be translated.

If there might be a sudden need for help with the Dutch translation, feel free to bug me. With the space problem, I can imagine it's a problem in Dutch as we're long winded people Two know more then one though, together we might be able to come up with something suitable?

For some things there are alternatives, but those alternatives are not consistant and/or canon with other translations of similar sentences.

In some cases though, there is not a single Dutch alternative (eg: "Up" => "Omhoog" in the find dialog).

Many controls are just long enough to hold the English translation. The thing is that English is a language with extremely many short words and where combined words don't exist; they all are seperate words (and thus can be 'splitted' over multiple lines).

In many other languages the words are much longer. Especially in Dutch where, as Fanta has pointed out, words are relative very long, not to mention that many words are combined together and can't be split.

eg: to give a (maybe not so good) example: "contact log viewer program" would become "contactpersonenlogboekprogramma".

These same issues also existed in Plus!3 and where also pointed out back then. The thing that some controls have even less available space (while there is plenty of space which can be used) now makes that even worse.

@Patchou: a list is being compiled with the trouble controls