Re: வணக்கம்...

[Tirumurti Vasudevan]

i feel ramadoss is pretty much throwing us in the water and asking us to
swim!
well nothing like making mistakes and learning but the wise learns from
other's mistakes!
so just my bit:

i don't know much about either tamil or translation.
> i don't claim any expertise.
> all i want to do is to put a few things i learnt in web so that others
> might benefit from it somehow or put me wiser!
>

so here goes.
some tips and tricks for the translators.
kbabel:

don't have the settings as "automatically start search".
in that case as you open a string that is bit longish like 4 lines, babel
will start searching and you cant work till it finishes searching and gives
no output as such long strings are unlikely to have any complete
translation.
so use the search function selectively when you are stumped for a
word.whenyou get it don't use the "copy search result to msgstring".
what it does is to replace whatever is in that box completely with this
string alone. but you wanted just that word to be copied.

don't delete forward. delete characters backward using the backspace key or
delete entire word.
any deletion of partial word will show up later as undeleted keystrokes.

you have பக்கம் typed and when your cursor is between ப and க் and hit
delete key thinking it will delete க் only.
but it will delete க்க . later it shows up bad as the second and third
keystrokes have not been deleted. you see ப்கம். as only the க was removed.
in short one needs to delete key strokes rather than letters.

as time goes by it is easier to delete a sentence completely and write again
rather than correct a misdone sentence.

keep in mind the common user. it is easier to be inaccurate and have the
user get an idea of what is wanted to be informed that be very accurate and
leave the user wondering what it is!

don't waste time translating the name of the application.when the user ends
up talking to some user in english language he wants to make sense when he
talks about the bluetooth.
if he keeps referring to நீலப் பல்  no one else can help him.of course this
is a matter of policy where only ramadoss can lay down a rule.

be sensitive to the context.
the word load can mean differently when it is a verb and when a noun.
but you may not see the context immediately.
esp when you come across  something like "load hard disk"
one has to see what it is preceded with.
if that is load CPU, you know it is used as a noun not verb.

that is all for now.
may be a few more things later.
regards
tv

will some one please write a howto on setting up tamil unicode?
in dapper ubuntu
in dapper kubuntu
in win xp

-- 
BE HAPPY! LIFE IS TOO SHORT TO BE UNHAPPY!
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