Re: [Gaim-i18n] Re: Bad language in Gaim

[Ethan B. <ebl...@cs...>]

Bjoern Voigt spake unto us the following wisdom:
> Ethan Blanton wrote:
> >Let's back up the horsie a bit ... where were the "many false or
> >improper answers" ?  I think you're making things up again, and quite
> >frankly I'm getting tired of it.
> Ok, ok. Let's write down a master solution. I do not review every single=
=20
> answer here and give points etc. :-) I counted four people which solved=
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> the survey. One of them did not wrote his message on this list. Thanks=20
> for all which filled out this survey.
>=20
> Look, the survey contained 6 strings and one SVN comment. How long you=20
> needed for the survey (incl. discussion, Google searching, source code=20
> viewing etc.)? I needed around 30 min for collecting the ansers.

If we're keeping score (which I guess we aren't, because the scores
are meaningless), it took me about 30 seconds to answer it completely
and correctly when I read your first email.

> Gaim has corrently 2578 i18n strings! The majority of them are not so=20
> difficult. But please don't make the translation task too hard.

Please don't ask us to make Gaim poorer because some strings don't
have an immediate naive and correct translation.  :-P

> Master solution:
> >1) What means "you can see the butterflies mating" in=20
> >src/gtkaccount.c:1297?
> Best answer:
>=20
>    Richard wrote: "It's in a callback function that's registered as a
>    pop-up handler for the port entry field in proxy options.
>    Right-click on that field and you'll see the string. I'd assume
>    easter egg. (NOTE: I had never seen this code before I looked at it
>    just now.)"
>=20
>    Unfortunately I was not able to test it. Right-clicking on the port
>    entry field shows a popup menu. But this popup menu only contains
>    GTK+ things (cut, copy, paste, Input methods etc.), nothing about
>    butterflies. May be it's "dead code" :-(

It's not, it works fine on my machine.  I don't know why yours doesn't.

> >3) What is a "TOC host" in src/protocols/toc/toc.c?
> Best Answer:
>=20
>    Ambrose Li said: "A TOC server. TOC is an AIM protocol. A host is a
>    computer. Literally a computer talking the TOC protocol, but the
>    context requires it to be a server, and in the DOS/Windows world
>    (since this is AIM) the word "host" traditionally only refers to
>    servers."

So, what do you propose we change here?  TOC is a technical term for
which any euphemism is only going to make things worse, not better.

> >4) What does "SSL Handshake Failed" in src/protocols/irc/irc.c:432 and=
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> >src/protocols/jabber/jabber.c:451 mean?
> Best Answer:
>=20
>    Richard wrote: "The process of negotiating an SSL connection failed."
>    Read this long SSL handshake description from Microsoft
>    http://support.microsoft.com/kb/q257591/
>    (Netscape made the SSL protocol and more detailed information can be
>    found there.)

Again, what would you propose we change here?  The Windows/OSX/GNOME
solution might be "just tell the user the connection failed, they
don't need to know why", but this is not acceptable to me.
"Handshake" is a technical term which is being used correctly.  It is
not clear to me that there is a better translation for this, either.

> >5) What is a "Channel HMAC" in src/protocols/silc/chat.c?
> Best Answer:
>=20
>    Ambrose Li wrote: "Short answer (looking at my po file): Some kind of=
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>    user authentication token
>    for the channel"
>    Richard wrote: "... Looking at the source, it's immediately clear (giv=
en=20
>    Channel Topic
>    is right there) that this is talking about a "channel" as in "chat"."
>=20
>    I personally think that the channel HMAC is a unique id for a chat=20
>    channel. It's possible to calculate such an unique id with the HMAC-MD=
5=20
>    or HZMAC-SHA1 digest algorithms.

That's not at all the case ... HMAC is, once again, a technical term
with a specific meaning.  (Basically, a keyed hash function, such that
two parties who have agreed on a shared secret can authenticate a
chunk of data of arbitrary size by calculating a MAC across it and
some function of the secret.)  A third time, removing this bit of text
removes important information that clueful users may be able to make
sense of.  What would you suggest?

I think we're wasting a lot of time here to come to the conclusion
that some strings are just hard to translate.  :-P

Ethan

--=20
The laws that forbid the carrying of arms are laws [that have no remedy
for evils].  They disarm only those who are neither inclined nor
determined to commit crimes.
		-- Cesare Beccaria, "On Crimes and Punishments", 1764