Page MenuHomePhabricator

[[MediaWiki:Subject-preview/da]] Provide more context for "Subject preview:" string
Closed, ResolvedPublic

Description

I'd like some context to this string ("Subject preview:") in order to translate it correctly.

This is not specific for Danish; it's about the context for the original in order to be able to translate it correctly.


URL: https://translatewiki.net/wiki/MediaWiki:Subject-preview/da

Event Timeline

Could you elaborate which variants / interpretations you see? As I don't see any other than "Preview of the subject line" here. Or do you need to know better what "subject" actually refers to?
It's harder to provide helpful context if it's unclear which parts/words need improvement :)

Aklapper renamed this task from [[MediaWiki:Subject-preview/da]] i18n issue to [[MediaWiki:Subject-preview/da]] Provide more context for "Subject preview:" string.Nov 27 2016, 3:44 PM
Aklapper edited projects, added MediaWiki-Page-editing; removed MediaWiki-General.

Thanks for getting back to me, Aklapper.

I will try to explain generally why I as a translator ask for context.

As a translator, I just get presented with a translation interface with a lot of strings without any context except for the specifically described one, and without the context it can be very hard (actually impossible) to translate the strings correctly. Any professional translator would agree that context is crucial for a good translation. If you know more than just a few languages, you will know that almost no string is generally translatable without proper context. Not even a simple string like "yes" would be translatable, as the translation of even that can depend on context; there can be more than one word for "yes" in some languages, each having a specific nuance of the English word "yes". Also, it is difficult to imagine what context is missing for all destination languages, so you just have to give as much context as possible. But any amount is better than no context at all.

To explain context: Context means the general surroundings in which that specific string appears. The context is not the string or the meaning of the string itself, it is the environment of the string. Were does it appear? In what situation does it appear? What happened before the string is displayed? Imagine having to tell a creature from Mars about it. The Mars creature somehow knows the language but not the specific software. It is about telling what is "obvious" for a person that knows about all details of the software, remembering that "obvious" is only obvious for a person with intricate knowledge. Good software translators rarely have that intricate knowledge; they are good at translating in general but do not necessarily know all the intricate parts of the specific software they are translating. And even if they did, they would still not know which part the specific string belongs to. Without the context, a translator will have to resort to guesswork, and that guesswork lowers the quality of the translation and will potentially confuse the end user who does see the context that the translator cannot see when translating.

You ask me what variants / interpretations there are. Well, it would be a lot of work to list all possible meanings in my specific language, as the amount of possible contexts is huge. And that would only solve the problem for my language. It would be much easier if the context was just supplied. That would help all translators.

So I am just asking for the general context of the string. Where does it appear? In what situation? What happened before? What subject are we talking about? What type of object does the "subject" apply to? I do not have the source code and cannot see the program flow. I do not even have a screenshot of the user interface situation in which the string appears.

I pressed the button to ask for more information, and it sent me here; I have no idea whether this is the right place.

Surely I wrote way too much here, but because I don't know you, I just tried to supply enough information for you to understand – you probably only needed 5 % of it, but I don't know which 5 %. Please don't be offended by the amount of surplus information.