Re: Strange sentences

[Matthew S. <gu...@ch...>]

> Once again I came upon a problem which I don't know how to translate.

These are the nasty ones, all of them are smileys

> What do you mean with "Thumbs Up", "Thumbs Down", "Guy Hug", "Girl=20
> Hug", "Beat Up", "ASL Check", "Batting Eyelashes", "Drooling",=20
> "Cuffs", "D'oh", "Dweeb", "Talk to the Hand", "Foot in the mouth",=20
> "Talk to the palm", "Tongue-out"?

Thumbs Up - action of holding out just a thumb, pointed upwards,=20
meaning "good" or "okay"

Thumbs Down - the same, but pointed down, meaning "bad" or "no way"

Guy hug - an emoticon of a guy with hands extended in a hug (I=20
personally translated it as "abrazo con hombre" or "a hug with a guy")

Girl hug - same as above, I did "abrazo con mujer" or "a hug with a=20
woman"

Beat up - I don't remember seeing this one...whoops.  Anyways, if=20
someone is "beat up" then they've been attacked, and most often=20
appeared bruised, scarred, perhaps bloody, etc

ASL check - common thing on AIM and other servicse, means "Age, Sex,=20
Location," except that the graphic won't change to, say "ESU" for=20
Spanish ("Edad, Sexo, Ubicaci=F3n"), so I think is best to just leave =
the=20
ASL as one.

Batting Eyelashes - quickly blinking the eyelashes, highly feminine

Drooling - allowing saliva to seep throuhg the lips.  Especially=20
commonly seen with students in classrooms that have fallen asleep :P

Cuffs - objects placed around the wrists by police officers to detain=20
suspects/criminals.  Normally called "handcuffs"

D'oh - um...English interjection...um..someone help me in=20
explaining....if I were to hit my head on something, I might yell out=20
"D'oh" instead of a number of expletives :P  Basically, some similar=20
interjection (if exists)

Dweeb - a smart-ass/geek, someone who tries to appear upper class and=20
intelligent, overly preppy perhaps, often seen with thick rim glasses=20
and slicked back hair (slightly derogatory)

Talk to the Hand - a "valley girl" expression in English.  Basically,=20
some people will throw their hand up palm facing your head and say=20
"Talk to the hand 'cause the face don't want to" or some other stupid=20
ending.  Talk to the palm is the same, but sounds a little akward to me=20=

for some reason, maybe it's because I'm from the South.

Foot in mouth - ick, I'm not sure I can explain this well.  An=20
expression you might hear in English is "I just put my foot in my=20
mouth" meaning (iirc, I'm so bad with my native tongue's idioms :P )=20
you've just blurted out something you weren't supposed to know/weren't=20=

supposed to tell.

Tongue out - people will stick their tongues out as a sign of=20
disrespect or possibly humor too.

> My problem is I couldn't really find it in context. :(

Trying either using Yahoo or MSN and looking in the smiley's menu.

> (Could these be some obscure smileys?)

Indeed

> Another one is that often Strings seem to be constructed from other=20
> strings which are combined in clever ways.

I haven't noticed this too much, but the general syntax of Spanish=20
seems to work with what they have.

> Well... its often not possible to translate them in a correct way (and=20=

> never if you don't have all the context), what should I do in that=20
> cases?

If you mean in terms of gender case, depends on the language.  I think=20=

Icelandic (iirc when I accidently opened Fire with Icelandic :P ) puts=20=

a slash at the end of the word followed by an alternate ending. =20
Spanish, along with I believe, other Romance languages, presumes=20
masculine (I doubt we want a buddy option for whether it's a guy, girl,=20=

or something else).

Same goes for a number case, at least, that's what I do.  If it's just=20=

really freaking weird stuff, we may need to find exactly when that=20
happens and create a new string in the source that will correctly work=20=

with it.  One thing that has disturbed me a little in terms of=20
localization is that some strings will be English fragments that assume=20=

the object will be attached to the end or the beginning.   In a lot of=20=

the strings, the object is shown as %@, or some other symbol.  I have=20
to say that I encourage the usage of these, and different labels after=20=

the % if there are more than one in a string, since we can't assume=20
that in a particular language the replacements will be in the same=20
order.


Matthew Stuckwisch
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