[Ubuntu-l10n-eng] Gaim/Pidgin's buddy

[Matthew Smith]

Hi,
it's getting a bit semantical now, but:

On 01/06/07, Sridhar Dhanapalan <sridhar at dhanapalan.com> wrote:
> Isn't 'buddy' just a colloquialism for 'friend'? In that case, your
> reservation applies equally to both terms.

It *is* a colloquialism for friend, but it has different shades of
meaning; I would say "alright, mate" and americans would say "hey,
buddy" as a greeting to an acquaintance or a stranger - but i wouldn't
call them "friend". the terms are synonyms, but they have different
connotations. The less colloquial 'friend' carries more weight. It's
why AIM, and in turn Pidgin, selected 'buddy' in the first place. It
gives the app a friendly feel, without being too definite about the
relationship you have with your buddies - that's what we should be
trying to capture, although as we can't have 'mate', I guess 'friend'
will do.

> I would
> think it better to bring up the issue with the KDE and GNOME en-GB teams
> (i.e. upstream) before changing anything in Ubuntu.

Note that Pidgin isn't a GNOME app, and they tend to get narky if you
suggest as much on the mailing list..

thanks,
Matt
-- 
smigifer at gmail dot com
http://www.tvroom.me.uk