Documentation issue

[Valerio Ricci]

> Thinking about that a little more, do you necessarily need the &detailed-
> view; entities removed? I mean, you don't have to translate the GUI elements 
> words for word, right?

No, I don't but in case of expressions which have a corresponding expression in
the target language I suppose it is good to translate them, this is not
completely true for technical terms which sometimes are more widely used in
their English form (I'm thinking for example about string macross, and things
like that) but in the case of "detailed view" the term has a meaning which is
clearly understandable from the word so in my opinion translating it makes the
whole more understandable. The aim of a translation is that of making an
application usable to the people that are not able to understand English, people
who can, surely prefer to read in the original, which is, by definition, more
precise.
In addition to it I think that in a GUI translation, presenting many terms out
of context, translation is even more important than in the documentation.
Finally I generally follow the guidelines for translators of the Italian
localization group of KDE, and the tendency is to translate as much as possible
for the reasons explained before.


After the long theoretical disquisition some practical facts: You do NOT have to
change it, as long as I can render it without the entity and eventually correct
the translation. Moreover in practice people who can use a linux distribution
and install a software that is not included by default and in some cases has to
be compiled by source code surely has a sufficient knowledge of English to
understand most of the term used. But I suppose that making the software
available to as much people as possible, if not a rule, has to be at least a
tendency.

> How is the documentation translated, anyway? Is it by paragraphs in the pot 
> file?
> 
> Robby

The translation follows the original, so it has the same structure. I think I
can say that it is divided by paragraphs, yes.

PS: Don't worry too much about this, I admit by myself that is a minor issue (if
you consider the fact that an Italian translation is a minor issue by itself, is
even more little).

Valerio