Re: ubuntu.com.cn 首页介绍文字的问题

[Lawrence Li]

Sorry I didn't realize that this is mostly an English-language list.
Don't know if this is necessary but I'll try to recap what I said in
Chinese earlier.

I'm talking about the intro text in the front page of
www.ubuntu.com.cn, which is the mainland China's mirror site of
Ubuntu. There are some significant problems in the text, which was
translated from the English text found in www.ubuntu.com. In my post
in a group blog called "TransNator" - which tracks translation errors
in Chinese online and offline literature, I offered the original text,
the Chinese text currently being used in ubuntu.com.cn, and my own
translation for the sake of comparison. It occurs to me that there are
several misreadings, and the target text doesn't really follow Chinese
language convention.

Here are three examples of misreading found in the ubuntu.com.cn text:

1. In the second paragraph, the original sentence "that software tools
should be usable by people in their local language and despite any
disabilities" was translated as "software tools should be usable by
people in their local language and DON'T COMPROMISE IN FEATURE".

The same sentence was translated into "software tools should be usable
by people in their local language and DON'T HAVE ANY DIFFERENCES IN
FEATURE" on the Ubuntu Taiwan (Traditional Chinese) page
(http://www.ubuntu.org.tw/), apparently it's the same misreading.

2. In the third paragraph, "not only are the tools you need available
free of charge" was translated into "not only ARE THEY free tools that
you need".

3. In the first paragraph, "freely available with both community and
professional support" was translated into "community and professional
support are freely available". Please note that the Chinese word for
"free as in free lunch" and that for "free as in freedom" are
different, in this very instance, free as in free lunch was used in
the text found on ubuntu.com.cn.

My post on the TransNator blog about this (including a newly
translated version by yours truly) can be read at:

http://www.chinesenewear.com/transnator/?p=32

It's in Chinese only.

I'm doing this not to show off, but it's my belief that such a
near-machine-translated text on the FRONT page of ubuntu.com.cn would
not only put potential Ubuntu users off, but would also stagnate the
spreading of Ubuntu.

all the best,


Lawrence




On 05/08/06, Zhengpeng Hou <zhengpeng.hou at gmail.com> wrote:
> Thanks for pointing it out, we will correct it as soon as possiable.
> BTW:, please use english in this mailing list,
>
> 在 06-8-5，Lawrence Li<lawrencelry at gmail.com> 写道：
> > 大家好，我是广州的一名 Linux 用户，主要使用 Debian 及 Ubuntu，刚刚加入 Ubuntu Translators list。
> >
> > 我想和大家探讨一下 ubuntu.com.cn
> > 首页那段介绍文字在翻译上的一些问题，有错译，也有译文不合中文语言习惯的问题。具体请参见这个地址（我是该帖作者）：
> >
> > http://www.chinesenewear.com/transnator/?p=32
> >
> > 我列出了原文、现有译文以及拙译，还有简单的分析，望大家批评指教。
> >
> > 祝好，
> >
> >
> > Lawrence
> > --
> > ubuntu-translators mailing list
> > ubuntu-translators at lists.ubuntu.com
> > https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-translators
> >
>