Word not translated into German

[Malte]

Binary package hint: gaim

In the German translation the following words appear: »Buddy«, »Buddies« and »Buddys«.

The word »Buddy« does not exist in any German dialect known to me. (Even if it did, its plural would not be »Buddies«. And even if it was, it would not be »Buddies« here and »Buddys« there.) Furthermore it is incomprehensible to an average person of German mother tongue, even if fairly aware of the English language.

Proposed solution, open to debate: Use the word »Kontakt«, plural »Kontakte«.

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: i386
Date: Sat Apr 21 18:52:02 2007
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 7.04
ExecutablePath: /usr/bin/gaim
Package: gaim 1:2.0.0+beta6-1ubuntu4
PackageArchitecture: i386
ProcCmdline: gaim
ProcCwd: /home/malte
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games
 LANG=de_DE.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: gaim
Uname: Linux aligatoro 2.6.20-15-generic #2 SMP Sun Apr 15 07:36:31 UTC 2007 i686 GNU/Linux

[Jannick Kuhr (jakuhr-deactivatedaccount)]

Since Gaim is translated upstream and not by the german Ubuntu translation team, I would strongly recommend to discuss these changes with the usptream translator and not to introduce any distribution specific changes.

During the last years Björn Voigt <bjoern ät cs.tu-berlin.de> has been the translator of Gaim. It is probably the best to contact him directly to discuss this issue.

Kind regards, Jannick

[Malte (malte-m)]

The main reason for the bug report to appear on Launchpad is actually that I felt so tempted to try out Ubuntu's integration of launchpad into the Help menu of Gnome applications. I'll do my homework now and file this in Gnome's Bugzilla.

[Malte (malte-m)]

Sorry for the noise. As I had to find out, Gaim/Pidgin is not managed by bugzilla.gnome.org. Mail sent to Björn Voigt instead.

[Jannick Kuhr (jakuhr-deactivatedaccount)]

No problem and thank you for the report. Now you know that the translation team reads its bugs ;-) Please let us know if you get Björn Voigt's answer.

Btw. as the upstream translator of KDE's Kopete I will discuss this translation (it's the same) on the kde mailinglist too. Feel free to report the next issue too.

[Malte (malte-m)]

(Sorry for the delay.) The answer was, basically, that the Pidgin translators (i. e. Björn and at least another one) have already unitized the plural form to »Buddys«, but they are not going to change the word itself because they think there is no better translation. That is, we stated that Björn and I disagree.

Anything worth mentioning from the discussion among the KDE people?

[Sebastian Heinlein (glatzor)]

Hm. Buddy is not a German word. So I would not count it as a translation at all. Kontakt seems to be a good solution. Would be nice if you could point to a mailing list discussion with the translators.

[Peter Jochum (peter-jochum)]

In my opinion "Buddy" is not a very good word for a German
translation. A possibility would be the word "Freund" (friend), but
that is to personal. The word buddy means "Kumpel" or "Kamerad". The
first one is far to personal and the second one got a slight military
touch. Why not use "Kontakt" (Contact). It is generic enough to fit
friends and not so close people you may have on your "Kontaktliste".
Besides it is used in other big IM-Clients as well.

2007/5/13, Sebastian Heinlein <email address hidden>:
> Hm. Buddy is not a German word. So I would not count it as a translation
> at all. Kontakt seems to be a good solution. Would be nice if you could
> point to a mailing list discussion with the translators.
>
> --
> Word not translated into German
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/108613
> You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu
> German Translators, which is a bug assignee.
>

[Malte (malte-m)]

Closed upstream as wontfix:

http://developer.pidgin.im/ticket/978

[Sebastian Heinlein (glatzor)]

Perhaps worth a policy split? We are free to change translation policies in Ubuntu.

[Jannick Kuhr (jakuhr-deactivatedaccount)]

Oh my god, please don't let us even think about starting such things...

[Jannick Kuhr (jakuhr-deactivatedaccount)]

I hope I didn't sound too harsh yesterday, but I really don't think that is a good idea to fork upstream translations, if it is not really necessary.

Regarding KDE's Kopete I started a discussion about this issue in the upstream team's forum. If someone would like to participate, this is the link:

http://oss.erdfunkstelle.de/kde-i18n/tiki-view_forum_thread.php?comments_parentId=310&topics_threshold=0&topics_offset=0&topics_sort_mode=lastPost_desc&topics_find=&forumId=1

[Matthias Urlichs (smurf)]

Hi,

Jannick Kuhr:
> I hope I didn't sound too harsh yesterday, but I really don't think that
> is a good idea to fork upstream translations, if it is not really
> necessary.
>
Sometimes, it is.

Not whole translations, but specific strings.

--
Matthias Urlichs | {M:U} IT Design @ m-u-it.de | <email address hidden>
Disclaimer: The quote was selected randomly. Really. | http://smurf.noris.de
 - -
:Wintel: n. Microsoft Windows plus Intel - the tacit alliance that
   dominated desktop computing in the 1990s. Now (1999) possibly on the
   verge of breaking up under pressure from {Linux}; see {Lintel}.

[Jannick Kuhr (jakuhr-deactivatedaccount)]

Just for information:

The translation of "Buddy" will be changed to "Kontakt" in Kopete for KDE4.

[Jean-Baptiste Lallement (jibel)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. However, Ubuntu gets its translations from the translations portion of Launchpad (http://translations.launchpad.net/ubuntu/), where translation teams work on making Ubuntu more useful in their language. If you want to change a translation in Ubuntu there is the right place.