Re: [Flightgear-devel] Localizaiton of FlightGear

[Arnt K. <ar...@c2...>]

On Wed, 29 Aug 2001 22:25:38 +0200, 
"Michael Basler" <pm...@je...>
wrote in <NDB...@je...>:

> Dear Arndt,
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: fli...@li...
> > [mailto:fli...@li...]On Behalf Of
Arnt
> > Karlsen
> > Sent: Wednesday, August 29, 2001 9:32 PM
> > To: fli...@li...
> > Subject: Re: [Flightgear-devel] Localizaiton of FlightGear
> 
> > ..if we take advantage of the translation work done on the 4
> > Geneva Conventions, we can have another 130+ languages available.
> > We'd first need to generate language pair filters.
> > Database job, I believe.  Could chop the texts down into
> > first individual articles, then cut down these into
> > individual sentences, then subsentences and words,
> > until singular meanings are lost.
> 
> I am not quite sure what you're speaking on. However, working as a
> technical translator for a living, I am very skeptical on any
> automatic translation tool. I once tested one by Langenscheidt, and
> the result was plainly unusable. Not to speak about Babelfish etc.

..I agree these software filters are crude.  Building 
what I propose, is a major job, possibly needing more 
manhours than FG.
Choosing the Geneva Conventions as the language context 
platform, buys a good translation tool for military law,
negotiating ceasefires, repressing Australian war crimes
against Afghan shipwreck refugees aboard a Norwegian ship, 
etc.  Bonuses include good Convention knowledge among 
soldiers, officers, policemen, journalists, coders etc.  

..neat, but not neccesarily what we want for localizing 
FG, agreed. Especially not when it's not ready.  
I'll try dropping this project bait a few other places, 
suggestions?

> My suggestion (and I once did a little bit of software localization):
> Programmers should extract the relevant strings into a few ASCII
files.
> Afterwards "ordinary" people like you and me and perhaps 128+ from
> other countries who speak (sort of) English plus another language can
> do and maintain (which IMHO is the more demanding job) the
> translations.

...and some of us will cheat using the best filter we can 
find.  ;-)

-- 
..med vennlig hilsen = with Kind Regards from Arnt... ;-)

  Scenarios always come in sets of three: 
  best case, worst case, and just in case.