Forum OpenACS Development: Re: Localization questions

thanks for the compilation of messages that could save
effort of translators or/and programmers. I think, however,
that it is the wrong approach to focus on the mass of
single words. The most laborious work ist not typing
translations for single words, but
- finding the contexts, and
- consolidating terminology.

You and Joel are right that programmers should not simply
create new message keys without consulting a central
repository. This repository, however, should contain some
hint leading to the .adp page or other UI context that
displays the message in question.

Then, the programmer could decide
- if his intended usage matches the terminology of the keys
  already available, or
- if the new terminology diverges and a new key must be
  created (ideally after some more deliberation about
  the usability and consistency of the terminology).

As Anja already warned here,
https://openacs.org/forums/message-view?message_id=135282
much care is needed to merge keys.
I cross-checked your list with our translations, and there
are many differences, although it's also a Germanic language
(so I would suspect there are still more problems with
languages less akin).

Action:
Administrative Actions: concatenated in one word, needing
lower case initial letter;
This action cannot be reversed: transcribed by one Word
("unwiderruflich")
This action will take...: different Word ("Vorgang")
Action in Curriculum: very preliminary due to broken
functionality.

Administer:
sometimes standing not alone (needing upper case) but also
sometimes prefixed by object (needing lower case)

Approved:
used for very different things:
E-Mail Servers ("genehmigt)
member state ("freigeschaltet")
other cases (mostly "freigegeben")

Author:
in more general cases as with filestore, a different word is needed ("Autor") than in more concrete ones as forums and news ("Verfasser").

Confirm:
To confirm: translated as noun (needing upper case)
Different word order (needing upper case) same as with Administer above

Email:
only sometimes used for the email letter itself,
often synonymously used like email address, and
sometimes meaning the action of emailing, both requiring
different (more precise) translation

Error:
compositions like "database error" or "error message" need
single Word ("Fehlermeldung") and therefore sometimes lower
case ("Datenbankfehler").

HTML:
Static (HTML) Data: needs different composition "HTML-Daten"

Name:
very dangerous, see opposite bug description
https://openacs.org/bugtracker/openacs/bug?bug%5fnumber=963

Preview:
incidentally all German occurrences are upper case, but English are different (e.g. faq.preview)

Search:
sometimes used as verb, sometimes used as noun.
Search forums: needs prefix "Foren DURCHsuchen"; if the same were applied to
Search users ("Benutzer durchsuchen") this would mean a
police personal search (Leibesvisitation).
Compositions needing lower case as Administer or Error above

Status:
Just lower case problems due to word composition as above.

Title:
critical, see separate discussion
https://openacs.org/forums/message-view?message_id=135956