Suggestion: language dictionary

[Philipp von Weitershausen]

Hello,

as a developer and translator of Zope 3 I have made the experience that it is 
very important to keep translations consistent.

Technical terms in English are often normal words that can be found in regular 
English dictionaries from before the computer times (bus, web, key, mouse, 
screen, disc, and many more). In a technology context they have a very special 
meaning. In foreign languages, this meaning does not have to correspond to the 
literal translation. Some words, on the other hand, are not even translated at 
all (e.g. in some languages "web").

For other terms, several acceptable translation exists. In this case or when a 
software uses English words with a new meaning or even invents new words, an 
appropriate translation has to be found. Here it is important to stay 
consistent throughout the translation of a software project.

In Zope 3, we came up with two solutions for these problems:

- As for the ambiguity of some words, we use unique message ids. E.g. button 
label and a web page heading could both read "Edit" but that doesn't mean that 
they are translated in the same way both times. In this case we would use the 
message ids "edit-button" and "edit-heading"; they would both default to "Edit" 
but could be translated differently. We're probably not the only ones with this 
convention and it isn't really something that Rosetta can do right now, since 
it requires i18n-awareness at a developer level. However, it is usually us 
translators who realize this and it's usually too late at that point, but in 
the future, the Rosetta community should find ways to communicate such needs 
back to the projects.

- Where Rosetta itself *can* help is provide a dictionary facility where 
translators of one language can agree on their project-specific conventions. In 
Zope 3 we have found that even only two translators working on one language can 
create enough inconsistency. That is why we have created wiki pages with Zope-
specific terms and their translations (e.g. 
http://dev.zope.org/Zope3/GermanDictionary).

It would be a definite plus for collaboration among Rosetta users if one could 
manage such dictionaries within the system (and maybe even look up terms while 
translating). Note that I'm not suggesting to hook Rosetta up to some actual 
English-XYZ dictionary. These technical dictionaries would be filled by the 
translators once they agree upon how certain technical terms occurring in the 
software need to be translated.

Philipp