Pot and kettle? :)
Hi. Thanks for all your translations!
I saw some midly frustrated edit summaries in your recent translations. Please assume good faith, and do to others what you like to have done to you. If you think a change by someone else, that we assume also wants to improve the translations for the language you are working on, needs discussion, please leave that user a note on their talk page. Eventually this will strengthen your language's translation community and not weaken it.
I am not doing to anyone what I wouldn't like to get back in return, nor I have caught myself not assuming best possible fate to the reasonable extent. So, please do elaborate why would you think otherwise.
I believe the Rancher crossed the line with this one:
"Jezički osećaj ti zakazao, kao i većini sr zajednice." [1]
Which translates as:
"Your feeling for language has failed, just as it has for the majority of the SR community."
Now, you wouldn't happen to be doing something about it, would you? It is a direct insult to the people he already used to disagree about translations. I am not assuming you are biased only because his insulting comments are not in English.
Another place where Rancher crossed the line. [1] Can you please ask him to refrain from personal attacks?
The whole quote of mine: "Verbal noun of 'blokirati' is 'blokada', not 'blok'. (Jezički osećaj ti zakazao, kao i većini sr zajednice.)" The sentence in the brackets is a response to his comment "never-heard of that word being used in the sr community. and does not sound right". I just noted that he is not the only one who thinks it sounds wrong. A majority of SR Wikipedia users write in the wrong way ('blok' instead of 'blokada'), but not all of them. Mihajlo must have heard of it before.
About the second one, I was surprised he didn't know such a basic thing. I can find as many examples as you wish regarding the use of imperative for command buttons (Microsoft, Google, open source projects etc.). He just wants to irritate me for some reason by revoking all of my edits, even after I explained why his translations are no good.
Mihajlo's quote: "It is inappropriate to revert my edit or initial translation without a discussion". I thought this is a free project where anyone can contribute in their own languages. So I, who made 42.359 edits on this wiki, won't allow anyone to change any of them without my permission / discussion? That's funny. And I do not need to discuss about anything since Mihajlo's translations are simply wrong. I already said why, but I will repeat it once again: 1) Noun forms are not used in messages with command/button text. Imperative form is used instead. 2) You use first-person singular of present tense when translating error messages and actions in progress. For example, "Loading symbols..." should be translated as "Учитавам симболе...", not "Учитавање симбола..." or "The comment could not be submitted" as "Не могу да пошаљем коментар" not "Коментар није могао бити послат". All of this can be found on Serbian portal page.
So here's what's going to happen: BOTH of you tone down, and sort it out in a civil way. If that doesn't appear to be possible, I'll take action. It's up to you.
Everyone's credibility on the project can be questioned, but with reason. When you simply wipe someone's work away, it is expected from you to leave a comment or even start a discussion. Any mute pusher is out of the character of this project. And here, that was you.
It is not me who irritates you, it is your lack of civil habits and ability to have a fact-based discourse and to NOT insult the other side every few minutes. Is that the reason you won't register on the SR wiki and have a civil discussion with the people there?
Please refrain from accusations based on what you think I am thinking or trying to do. That is most distasteful, rude and unsmart way to "build" something with a "wiki" prefix.
I've had an IRC chat with Rancher. It seems like the main part of the discussion is about using imperative vs. infinitive translations. We've had the same discussion for Dutch. In NL, Microsoft uses infinitive, Apple uses imperative for menu items.
It's really important to get consensus on this, because using this in a mixed way creates very confusing user interfaces.
I think getting it written down properly what the alternatives are, getting consensus with more than the two of you -- there are more than two translators for your language, right? -- and then sticking to it, and fixing whatever currently differs, will solve this problem.
UI translators must stick to conventions, otherwise users suffer. Please keep that in mind.
Yeah, the other part is about error messages and actions in progress, but let's focus on this one for now.
I chose the verbs "Otkaži" and "Odustani", both meaning "Cancel", in testing purposes. Just to let you know, "Otkaži" and "Odustani" are imperative forms (the first number in the brackets below, which shows how many results are there for that form), while "Otkaz" and "Odustajanje" are noun forms that Mihajlo uses.
Open-Tran.eu (18:0)
Microsoft (10:0)
MyMemory (6:0)
Tausdata.org (13:0) — this one is actually Croatian, but they are using the imperative form in this purpose, too.
This means that there are no results AT ALL for the words in noun forms in the context of buttons. By the way, Google is using imperative too, of course. Just look at YouTube or Gmail.
P. S. Take a look at Serbian portal page.
Here I am, back from a good weekend.
Siebrand, you're right getting consensus on this should take more than me and Rancher. Otherwise translatewiki might be getting some translations fuzzy over and over, when sysops stop by to edit a few translations (yeah, doesn't happen too often). Since my time for this rally is up, I'll give directions what is best thing to do. Taken that the conventions should be created in collaboration with the community that exists on the sr.wiki, here is how we're doing it:
In short:
- A proposal should be written and posted there as a subpage. Also a post in the village pump should be made so that people feel invited. My suggestion is Rancher makes it better defined, stated and elaborated than the page here.
- Let us have it discussed.
- If people agree it is fine to go out like that, we'll have it voted. Otherwise, it will need to be amended.
- Successfully chosen policy can be copied here. Everything else will need amends.
- That's called a legit policy.
Sounds fair, eh? ;) In case Rancher refrains from insulting phrases like the ones I pointed out up there, the process will probably not be delayed by having him blocked over and over.
I don't think this is the correct way to go. The Wikipedia community of editors isn't needed for input on localisation of software -- not only MediaWiki, but all products that are being translated in translatewiki.net.
To keep things simple and short, I think you should approach whoever has contributed to the sr translations here in the past. Portal:Sr will contain a partial list. You can send them an e-mail and leave a note on their talk page.