[Qt-creator] Troubles with Czech translation of QtC

[Diego Iastrubni]

Hi Vojtěch,

I am speaking as a fellow translator. Translating KDE to Hebrew for almost
10 years now (crap, I am old...)

On Sat, May 12, 2012 at 9:35 PM, Vojtěch Král <vojtech at kral.hk> wrote:

>
>   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:
>
>
>From a "management" point of view - he is doing a  great job, no? He is
doing a lot of work for free. Great no?

How hard is to fix his translation problems?



>   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_.
>
>
"he's not  IT-savvy, and it gets worse: he refuses to get familiar with the
technical subject of the translation."

This sums things up - IMHO he is dangerous to your community. He is not
advancing the czech translation but bringing it back. Translations should
match the audience, and if they don't match, the users will refuse to use
it, and then, why is it done?

You might argue that he is doing for his own fun, but you claim that he
does not use Qt, nor he is a programmer. So... why should he commit to
those projects?

I assume that there are projects in which he is very vaulable, but as much
as the application gets technical... his translations are worst, correct?
Then revoke permissions from him to those projects. Then start fixing his
translations. If it's not possible - just someone should review all his
translations. As you said - the community does not trust his work, correct?


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?
>
>
NO. BAD TRANSLATIONS WILL GIVE BAD IMPRESSIONS. Fix them.

For example, I refuse to accept translations for several applications
(mostly development tools and command line utilities). And there are
applications from which I remove translations on stable branches - as they
are not of good quality (the translations are kept in development branches,
someone worked and I will not trash his work).

My key point is: don't talk. Do.
This guy even with all the problems he is causing you he is kicking ass
more then you. If you think you can do better - do. If not. FOSS advances
from people doing, and not talking about it.
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