Irritating German translation in Settings menu (possibly other languages affected?)

[Stefano Palazzo]

The German Translation i refer to in this bug is:
"Beim Starten verbinden mit:" (label) -> "Automatisch"/"Wie Zuletzt"/"Nie" (dropdown) in the settings dialogue.

which translates like this:

On start up, connect to: Automatically
On start up, connect to: same as the last time
On start up, connect to: never

I haven't the faintest idea what the option actually does.
In particular, the word "mit" ("to") confuses me. It seems i have no choice as to what ubuntu one connect to, rather whether it connects to something given, automatically, same as last time (whatever that means) or never connects to anything.

Additonally, the word "Starten" ("Start Up") could mean both starting ubuntu or starting the ubuntu one client.

The Translation (at least) doesn't convey any clear meaning.

If i'd understand what the option does, i could make a suggestion as to what it should read. :-)

Hope this is useful,
Stefano Palazzo

[Duane Hinnen (duanedesign)]

Steffano,
Thank you for your attention to detail and filing this report. That option determines whether Ubuntu One starts up when the computer starts. It can either start on start up all the time, start if you had it on last time the computer was up, or never start Ubuntu One on computer start up. On my computer it reads.

Connect on start: Automatically
Connect on start: Remember last
Connect on start: Never

Connect on start is the computer start.

Hope this helps, and i look forward to your input on making this more clear to the end user.

thank you,
duanedesign

[Stefano Palazzo (stefano-palazzo)]

Thank you for your quick repsonse,

knowing now what the setting does, i thought about a better translation:

"Automatisch Starten" -> "Immer", "Nie", "Beim Herunterfahren merken"

Which translates to:

"Start Automatically" -> "Always", "Never", "Remember when shutting down"

The world Always clearly tells the user that this is a recurring setting, as with the word Never. The last option is difficult to integrate while keeping the syntax of the 'sentence', so i thought i'd make it quite obvious, so that the user doesn't attempt to second-guess the object of the sentence.

What do you think about my proposal?
Also, do you think my translation back to English is more clear and straightforward than the current wording? (It's hard to tell if you've been staring at one dialogue for too long)

Thank you again for you quick and helpful reply,
I hope this is somewhat useful,

Stefano.

[Paul Sladen (sladen)]

This dialogue does seem to be "upside down".... if I understand it, there's no point Ubuntu One starting if there no network, or no work to be done. If it stays as is, the wording should probably reflect it being *login* that starts the U1 applet for a particular user, not start-up itself.

If there's something to be done, U1 should "just work" and be started as the result of some D-Bus invocation meaningfully requiring it. Or is this just talking about the status-bar applet icon?

[Stefano Palazzo (stefano-palazzo)]

This is talking about ubuntu one's settings, reachable via the status-bar applet icon.

Currently, Ubuntu One deals with no available network connection gracefully, but i think that the UI strings should act as if there is a connection, because the ubuntu one client implies one. That is to say, assume the user knows that this program is dependent on a connection, if there is none, don't bother the user by changing (at least the settings-) dialogue, because there probably is a good reason for the user not being connected, and other entities have already informed the user.

Just works in this case, would be not to change the settings experience.

what do you think? (or did I misunderstand you?)

Just as an aside, I would like to hear your thoughts about the necessity of the setting. Wouldn't it be sensible to just assume that the user wants to always have the client running? I was thinking that maybe this setting could be removed altogether, if no case can be made for the user not wanting to start the client automatically (but I can't thin of a reason why now).

[Paul Sladen (sladen)]

I would have thought the use-case is wanting to *pause* the network-heavy synchronisation actions of the various U1 backends: eg. "I'm on GPRS and need to get some other work done" or "I'm roaming internationally, don't you dare use any ultra expensive bandwidth".

[Stefano Palazzo (stefano-palazzo)]

That's a very good point.

Should I suggest my translation from #2 then?
Should I also suggest my translation back to English for the English locale, or is the current one better?

[Stefano Palazzo (stefano-palazzo)]

Since this bug is not applicable to Lucid, it should now be marked "won't fix".

[Joshua Hoover (joshuahoover)]

As Stefano suggested, I'm marking as "Won't Fix" since this is no longer valid in Lucid and will not be updated in Karmic.