quote:
Originally posted by ZrednaZ
As far as Danish goes, we've only had comments from outside users like once or twice in 5 years.
Either that means:
A) reporting mistakes is indeed a big hassle for people and they neglect it...
B) There aren't many (read:none) mistakes in the Danish translation...
I think it is B, because... (read on)
quote:
Originally posted by ZrednaZ
I think that just about covers it; commence flaming!
flaming procedure starting in:
T minus 3
T minus 2
T minus 1:
lift off......
I agree with Omar, although ZrednaZ has very good points.
But, to my knowledge, the guidelines are just that: guidelines. You don't need to follow them, it is just very handy for the translators if people do follow the instructions. Hence why they are pointed out.
That is: you don't even need to follow them literally. In some cases following them literally will make the work for the translator even harder. eg: I once made an extremely long post with all kinds of mistakes pointed out in various languages. If I would have followed the guideline literally that post would have become 10 times bigger and messy.
The big point of the guidelines is:
A) point out
where the mistake is made, which is the most important requirement of all.
- This can be done like suggested in the guidelines: [topic]keyname=value
- or it can be done by providing a screenshot.
- or it can be done by providing just the text (although in many cases there are a lot of hits, so one should be carefull with it)
B) explain
what the mistake is.
eg: ampersand collisions, spelling, too long lines, etc...
C) Give the proper
correction.
Although the guidelines state that you must give a proper fix, in many cases it is up to the translator to come up with the fix. So this too is just a guideline/suggestion.
Anyways, bottom line, it doesn't hurt to read the guidelines for reporting a mistake. And thus there is no harm done when you point out that there is something like the guidelines and that they at least should be read, just for the information/to know roughly what is expected. Though, it should indeed never be a true requirement either.
As long as both the user and the translator understand eachother it would be ok... Which is the case in that Hebrew thread.... But that was after people said that he should go to the translation forum and report the mistakes, instead of just saying "there are a lot of mistakes"...
But, since he provided screenshots, it gives a far better picture to other people (incl. Patchou), who don't know the language, about the massive amount of mistakes in the translation. And backs up what The_Joker has been saying about the current translation...
(and it personally raises big questions on the quality.)
Nevertheless, writing down the exact phrases instead of only providing a screenshot would have helped a lot. Since now the translator must manually search for those strings. While, if the exact wrong phrases were given, the translator could just copy/search/paste them. Especially if there are so many mistakes (if it was just one or two lines, it would have been not be so difficult for the translator).
Also, it would have been less work for the one who reported the mistakes, since he only needed to type over (or copy/paste too) the phrases, instead of making screenshots, editing the screenshots, uploading them, making a post with all the links and tag formatting, etc...
(this said, the guidelines may be up to some revising though. Not so much for the official translators, but more for the people who want to report something and/or start their own translation. Although I know this is way way far from priority number one.)
/ 
