[Qt-creator] Troubles with Czech translation of QtC

[Vojtěch Král]

Hi,
  Just to introduce myself shortly: I'm a Czech student of IT and CS, I like to use (F)OSS SW
and I use Qt Creator both professionally and for hobby projects as it's the best IDE
I've come across so far.


  Now, I've been concerned with this problem for some time, but only recent events
made me speak up. Czech translation of QtC is done by Pavel Fric (http://fripohled.blogspot.com)
A translator of some portion of FOSS SW. He is in czech Linux/FOSS community known as
a bit of a controversial person, but it has been relatively ok up till now.
  Like 70% of strings translated by this guy are done reasonably well, or acceptably at least.
Of the the other 30%, some are a bit cumbersome, but, sadly, some (like 20%) are really horrible.
There are two main reasons for this:


  1) This guy is a 19th-century-style purist. I don't know if you know about that movement,
but those were people (and some still are) who seek to erradicate _all_ expressions from Czech language
that do not have _strictly_ czech/slavoic etimology, even those that have been used in Czech for centuries.
By consequence, some of these strings sound ridiculous to ordinary czech person and might even be misleading.


  2) He does not use Qt, he is not a programmer, he's not even IT-savvy, and it gets worse: he refuses to get familiar
with the technical subject of the translation. In QtC, this mostly encompases programming-related and VCS-related strings.
Many members of the czech community have urged him to be less radical, to get familiar with the technical stuff
at hand, to harmonize his translations with czech literature and existing translations, but he _refuses to do so_.


In a recent discussion (https://www.abclinuxu.cz/zpravicky/qt-creator-2.5.0) I have recommended him to read
the Pro Git book, which has been translated to czech very nicely, so he could see how VCS terminology is translated.
I've mentioned it being a good source multiple times and I have done so very politely, but nevertheless 
he _refused to have a look at it_. Under pressure of several guys in the discussion, he corrected a few of the strings,
so they are somewhat acceptable now, but he clearly is not willing to change his attitude and we have
no idea what he comes up with next because he keeps introducing strange translations. The last one being
an almost incomprehensible translation of "commit message" which I didn't get him to change, even though it is, FYI,
translated in czech Pro Git very nicely.


Rather than existing czech translations (Pro Git, programming books, etc...) he uses german translations as a clue.
He refused to comment on that.


TL;DR, current czech translation of QtC is of questionable quality, some strings (mainly technical ones)
are at times misleading and attitude of the translator to the rest of the community is dismisive and arrogant.


The question is: Is a bad translation really better than no translation at all?


Thank you for your thoughts and opinions.


Vojtech "kralyk" Kral