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Language Love
Created Jun 1, 2009
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Colors
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Palettes
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Patterns
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Lovers
Attention COLOURlovers! We need your help making sure our translations are accurate! Please let us know here if you have found any inaccurate translations and can help us with finding the correct ones.
Group Avatar from: http://www.flickr.com/photos/palmdiscipline/139580259/
PureForm
Please include:
- A link to the page where you found the inaccurate translation
- The current translation
- The correct translation
- The translation in English
noviera
current: Gelegentlich
correct: Zufällig
engl: random
current: Nächster Profil
correct: Nächstes Profil
engl: next profile
(seen at "stats"):
corrent: This Month
correct: Dieses Monat
engl:this month
http://de-de.colourlovers.com/lover/noviera/loveNotes
current translation: "Mitglied seit 31 DÜRFEN, 2009"
correct translation: "Mitglied seit 31. Mai 2009"
translation in english: "Color lovin' since 31 May, 2009"
Some date formats, unfortunately, wont be possible for now :-/
http://de-de.colourlovers.com/lover/noviera/loveNotes
current translation: "Mehr meineS Paletten"
correct translation: "Mehr meiner Paletten (Mehr meiner Farben, Mehr meiner Muster)"
translation in english: "More of my Palettes"
http://de-de.colourlovers.com/palettes/add
current: Umbauten
correct: Schlagworte (But i think most german speaking people would prefere "tags" instead)
engl: tags
current: klar
correct: löschen (delete) / or: "entfernen" (remove)
engl: clear
http://de-de.colourlovers.com/group/Language_Love/conversations/6945/Deutsch_-_Deutschland
current: addieren eine anmerkung
correct: Anmerkung hinzufügen
engl: add a comment
Thanks! - PureForm
_stefan
1)
current: "Wir sprechen Englisch, aber wir tun unser Bestes, um die Farbe der Liebe mit Ihnen in Ihrer Muttersprache. Wenn Sie irgendwelche Probleme mit dieser Sprache, lassen Sie es uns bitte wissen."
correct: "Wir sprechen Englisch, aber wir tun unser Bestes, um die Liebe zu Fraben mit Ihnen in Ihrer Muttersprache zu teilen. Wenn Sie irgendwelche Probleme mit dieser Sprache haben, lassen Sie es uns bitte wissen."
translation: "We speak English, but we do our best to share the love to colors with you in your mother tongue. If you have any problems with this language, please let us know."
note: In German you have two froms of "you" one is more private and personal and one more official and serious. You use the second here. If you want the translation in the first just tell me.
2)
current: "Mehr meines Farben", "Mehr meines Paletten", "Mehr meines Muster"
correct: "Weitere meiner Farben", "Weitere meiner Paletten", "Weitere meiner Muster"
translation: "more of my colors", "more of my palettes", "more of my patterns"
3)
current: "Liebes-Anmerkungen"
correct: "Liebesnachichten" / "Liebesbriefe"
translation: "love notes" / "love letters"
note: "Liebesnachrichten" sounds quite wooden and "Liebe" = "love" has a more heavy weight in German. Actually I would prefer to leave it untranslated here and keep the word "love notes" :)
4)
current: "6 Stunden Vor"
correct: "Vor 6 Stunden"
translation: "6 hours ago"
Some date formats, unfortunately, wont be possible for now .. ivluding the "x minutes / hours / days / weeks ago" one :-/
5)
current: "Zurück ... Nächster"
correct: "Zurück ... Vor"
translation: "back ... forward"
Thanks! - PureForm
noviera
current: Verursachter 17 Stunden Vor
correct: Entstanden vor 17 Stunden
engl: created 17 hours ago
current: Späteste Blogpfosten
correct: Aktuellste Blog Einträge
engl: latest blog posts
Navigation
current: Suchgruppen
correct: Gruppen suchen
engl: Search Groups
Thanks! - PureForm
_stefan
1)
current: "Keine Tags hinzufügen!"
correct: "Keine Tags hinzugefügt" / "Keine Tags bisher, Tags hinzufügen!" / "Tags hinzufügen!"
translation: "no tags added yet" / "no tags yet, add tags!" / "add tags!"
note: It's not so easy to keep it as short and catchy as in English.
2)
current: "Vorgeschlagen von _stefan"
correct: "Veröffentlicht von _stefan"
translation: "published by _stefan"
3)
current: "(2 Abstimmungen)"
correct: "(2 Stimmen)" / "(2 mal abgestimmt)"
translated: "(2 votes)" / "(2 times voted)"
4)
current: "Addieren eine Etikett"
correct: "Tag hinzufügen" / "Stichwort hinzufügen"
translation: "Add a tag" / "Add a keyword"
5)
current: "Späteste Blogpfosten"
correct: "Neueste Blogeinträge" / "Aktuelle Blogeinträge"
translation: "newest blog posts" / "recent blog posts"
Thanks! - PureForm
_stefan
"Aktuellste Blog Einträge" is almost right, but valid German would be "Aktuellste Blogeinträge" (in German you glue the words together :)
Site: http://de-de.colourlovers.com/
1)
current: "COLOURlovers :: Farbe neigt + Paletten"
correct: "COLOURlovers :: Farbtrends + Paletten"
translated: "COLOURlovers :: Color trends + Paletten"
2)
current: "Mehr Website Farben", "Mehr Magazine Farben"
correct: "Mehr Websitefarben" / "Weitere Websitefarben", "Mehr Magazinfarben" / "Weitere Magazinfarben"
translation: "More website colors", "More magazine colors"
3)
current: "Mehr Palettes"
correct: "Mehr Paletten"
translated: "More palettes"
4)
current: "Lagern"
correct: "Geschäft" / "Einkaufen" / "Shop"
translated: "Store" / "Shopping" / "Shop"
note: Often the English word is so common in German websites that we don't translate it at all.
Thanks! - PureForm
_stefan
1)
current: "Hauptsächlich"
correct: "Main" / "Start" / "Hauptseite" / "Profil"
translated: "Main" / "Start" / "Main page" / "Profile"
note: Hauptsächlich isn't really wrong, but nobody would use it here. It could be translated with "basically". Once more it's not so easy to find a short and catchy translation for "Main".
2)
current: "Abbildungen"
correct: "Bilder"
translated: "Pictures"
note: "Abbildungen" is not wrong but a bit circuitous. "Bilder" is more simple and imho the better translation for "pics".
3)
current: "Mein Sprechen"
correct: "Gesagtes" / "Meine Gespräche" / "Meine Kommentare"
translated: "(what has been) said" / "My conversations" / "My comments"
note: "Mein Sprechen" would be translated with "my speech" and sounds quite uncommon in my ear. I would prefer "Gesagtes" or "Meine Kommentare". This is a bit complicated though because we also have the point "Meine Anmerkungen" here, which is supposed to mean something like "comments people made on my profile page". Hmmm, differcult, differcult ...
4)
current: "Mein Liebhaber"
correct: "Meine Liebhaber"
translated: "My lovers"
-----
conclusion: It's not so easy to translate such an complex and interactive website word by word. Till the translation is perfect (and maybe checked by someone professional, dunno if this is in the budget) I would suggest to mark the other languages with a "beta" or something. Otherwise it could be sort of bad publicity for CL.
Just my 2 cents.
Thank you for all your hard work PureForm, you rock! :)
Thanks! - PureForm
_stefan
current: "Wir sprechen Englisch, aber wir tun unser Bestes, um die Liebe zu Fraben mit Ihnen in Ihrer Muttersprache zu teilen. Wenn Sie irgendwelche Probleme mit dieser Sprache haben, lassen Sie es uns bitte wissen."
correct: "Wir sprechen Englisch, aber wir tun unser Bestes, um die Liebe zu Farben mit Ihnen in Ihrer Muttersprache zu teilen. Wenn Sie irgendwelche Probleme mit dieser Sprache haben, lassen Sie es uns bitte wissen."
sorry, just a typo :)
Thanks! - PureForm
saldridge
correct: "Weitere meiner Farben", "Weitere meiner Paletten", "Weitere meiner Muster"
translation: "more of my colors", "more of my palettes", "more of my patterns"
Have you ever heard anyone say "Weitere meiner Farben"? No one speaks like this, how about "Meine anderen Farben", "Meine anderen Paletten", "Meine anderen Muster".
Other than that, this is horrible. Machine translation does not work. I am a professional German translator and I don't even know where to start correcting, there is hardly any section that is correct. I apologize for the harsh words from a new member, but this is very very bad right now. Can you export the text strings and divide them among some volunteers? And no, I am not fishing for a job, I am employed but I am offering my help. Export the text, send me the export and I can tell you how long it would approximately take to translate this properly.
With bleeding eyes
Susanne
Thanks! - PureForm
onebreath
I completely agree. Some of these translations do reflect badly on the site. I mean they're ridiculous. Also you really need someone to do a professional translation of all the legalese speak. I translated a few paragraphs of the privacy policy - which weren't used apparently - but I stopped when I realized it could give you trouble if I made a mistake.
_stefan
Ha, there we have the professional I was looking for. Cool offer! I hope PureForm asks you for it :)
PureForm
We were expecting quite a few of the translations to be off, and sometimes make no sense whatsoever... however, we don't have the resources to hire translators so I took the time to do each one manually using, yes, online translators.
The one thing we were counting on was for the community to pitch in and help out; mainly because everyone is so helpful already. We figured members would really like to help translate the site into their native tongue, making it feel more like home for them.
I'm sorry the current translations are so crappy... it's really the absolute best I could do being monolingual. As you can see, members are already stepping in and helping out. I encourage you to do the same :-) ... fixing the mistakes sometimes take a while... in fact, it took me 2 hours to fix the "3 Minutes Ago" / "1 Hour Ago" translation this morning, but I did it because I want each version to be as great as it can be, and for native German / Spanish / Hindi / Japanese / etc speakers to have their own piece of the color love.... there's plenty to go around :-)
I would really like to take you up on your offer for helping with the de-de translations... I'll shoot you an email once I'm ready with a more proper translation tool [other than this group].
onebreath wrote:
Making the languages Beta was something I had planned on doing before the launch, but it had slipped between the cracks and I didn't get the "Beta" notices up in time... though, I have added them and anyone deviating from the English version will see the notice.
saldridge
I have all the professional tools to make sure the same terminology is used, I can divide up the text, maybe some people who helped here would be willing to assist in doing it properly? I can probably supply something like an Excel file where translations can be added/corrected.
I agree with onebreath, I will not touch the legal text - and I'd recommend you don't either. I think a correct text in English causes less trouble than a wrong translation.
I also work for a color company, so I know a little bit what I am talking about :-)
PS: I assume you have no budget at all? I could still post a request for you on some of the translation mailing lists asking for volunteers - maybe some will do a better job just for honorable mentioning somewhere?
PureForm
No CMS, it's 100% custom code :-)
I'm working on a tool as I type for members to help with the translations, It'll probably be done here in the next few hours. I'll post a link once it's up.
Yes, we have exactly $0 for the translations. If you know of anyone who would like to help out just for a little love from us in return that would be grand :-)
saldridge
It's fine to have a tool for volunteers, but for a professional translator, custom tools will make it much harder. Is it possible to provide a tool and a file?
PureForm
I don't plan on putting the translations in to flat text files, mainly because there are over 20,000 of them in all, and I need to keep a very strict relationship between the English phrase and the localized phrase... what do you find difficult about the tool? If you have suggestions I would be more than happy to change the tool to work better for you :-)
saldridge
Are you sure there are translatable strings in 20,000 files? If yes, there is a huge structural issue with the system. Most applications (web or other) have resource files that contain the translatable strings and strings are identified by a string ID. How will you ever try to manage 20,000 files per language if you make updates and add new features?
PureForm
You haven't seen the tool? I really appreciate your willingness to help, but it is the best way for me to interface the translations to our awesome translators. I'm also a little puzzled as to how you would know whether the tool is "extremely inefficient, tideous and error prone" when you haven't seen it yet. There are quite a few contextual hints provided for most phrases as well as other people's translations to corroborate with. It also provides translators with very specific instructions on how exactly to go about translating the phrases, to help keep our brand consistent as well as explicitly inform people to be casual and creative with the translations.
Also, your assumptions about our translation system are way off... though I suspect that it might be a language barrier issue :-) ... I don't use flat files for the translations -- and I don't for many reasons. They're all stored in the DB with a unique ID for each translation, and are cached in memory the first time they are used on the site for performance.
saldridge
In translation, terminology is not 1:1 - for every word there are various different possible translations, some depend on the context, some depend on the regional language and others are simply a matter of preference. None of those are generally flat out wrong, but for a good translation you just have to be consistent.
I don't think my assumptions are way off, every CMS I have worked with - custom or off-the-rack - had the ability to export strings in a tabular or XML format, of course the unique IDs are exported too in order to allow the translation to be imported back.
The system you use is fine if you are crowd-sourcing translations but they really are not the a good idea for a professional translation. I have no problem having a different opinion than you but I just can't help you then. But from what I understand now, you said your system works great anyway since you have implemented the tool instead of machine translating. I am looking forward to seeing the updated translations "go live".