Re: [GNU Herds]: Portuguese (Portugal?) translator

[Davi Leal]

Thanks Duarte!. This is the detailed explanation we needed.

Best regards,
Davi



Duarte "HappyGuy" Loreto wrote:
> Hello, Davi
>
> Hard questions you make, not sure I can answer them properly... I'm cutting
> of parts of previous messages to keep just the
> questions/attempts-to-answer...
>
> On 1/24/07, Davi Leal <address@hidden> wrote:
> > There are some points about I would like know your opinion:
> >
> > A) About the language names to use at the webapp heading,
> >    should we replace "Português" by "Português (Europeu)", or
> >    better by "Português (Portugal)" ?.
> >
> >    Note we are going to add the Brazilian one too. I hope
> >    Fatima will carry out such task.
> >
> >    Let me know if I am right:
> >
> >      There are two Portuguese languages:
> >         "Portuguese (European?)"  pt_PT
> >         "Portuguese (Brazilian)" pt_BR
> >
> >       "Portuguese (European?)" is official at:
> >            Portugal (PT)
> >            Angola (AO)
> >            Cape Verde (CV)
> >            Guinea-Bissau (GW)
> >            Mozambique (MZ)
> >            São Tomé and Príncipe (ST)
> >
> >       "Portuguese (European?)" is co-official at:
> >            Macau (MO)
> >            East Timor (TL)
> >
> >       "Portuguese (Brazilian)" is official at:
> >            Brazil (BR)
> >
> >    However, if "Portuguese (European)" is used too at
> >    Angola, Mozambique, etc. should it name be
> >    "Portuguese (Portugal)" or just "Portuguese"
> >    instead of "Portuguese (European)" ?.
> >
> >    I am not sure, but as the code is pt_PT I think the
> >    best option would be "Portuguese (Portugal)" ?.
> >
> >      Ref.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portuguese_language
>
> This is tricky both for historical and community-size issues. Historically,
> the Portuguese translation is done using only the "pt" language code. This
> is true, for instance, in projects like GNOME or KDE. Then the Brazilian
> team makes up a pt_BR translation. There are other projects where we have
> just the "Portuguese" version and it contains a mixture of European and
> Brazilian Portuguese, as visible on the Wikipedia.
>
> As far as I know, there should be no differences on the African and Eastern
> ex-colonies Portuguese and the one spoken in Portugal, as the country
> ruling was enforced until much later (1971 for Timor, 1974 for African
> colonies, 1999 for Macau). Brazil became independent during the XVIII
> century, thus a bigger difference on the grammar and language.
>
> I have only heard of attempts to unify the written language between
> Portugal and Brasil. Most of the differences on formal written texts are on
> silent letters (i.e.: the "c" in projecto -> projeto; directório ->
> diretório; etc) and verb tense usage on sentences. We usually say that it's
> hard to distinguish between good written Brazilian (i.e.:Paulo Coelho) and
> Portuguese. The same is not true in more informal writing and differences
> are most visible on spoken communication.
>
> What has happened, though, is that Brazil has been highly involved in Open
> Source, specially since the country is ruled by Lula da Silva. They are 170
> million people. Portuguese are 10 million and less involved in Open Source.
> That lead to a situation where much of the "Portuguese" translation on many
> OSS projects is lead or exclusively done by Brazilians. This results into
> many Portuguese being used to read brazilian IT terminology, to which also
> Microsoft contributed because the first versions of Windows 3.x released in
> Portuguese in Portugal were Brazilian translations. Only Windows95 had a
> european portuguese version.
>
> We might not notice if the Angolan, Mozambican, etc. language difference is
> big or not partially because the technological development on those
> countries is very low and they don't seem to be worried with the extra
> localization effort to have pt_AO or pt_MZ.
>
> So, although I just gave you a lot of information on why this is a tricky
> issue, I have given no real solution. "My" solution follows, but you should
> consider it very much just an opinion. Specially note that I do
> translations as an hobby, I've had formal education on business management
> and
> international finances and I have worked as a  programmer or technical
> consultant on business related software. Not being a linguistic, official
> translator nor sociologist, I might be overlooking many important aspects
> when stating my opinion.
>
> The idea of locales and country codes, as far as I know, is that you have a
> main language that receives a code (pt, es, de, ...). The translation done
> should cover the language in its purest form, that is usually associated
> with the country where it is originating from. Then, for specific locations
> or small changes, there are the country codes to make adaptations of the
> main translation for specific locales. Thus an en_GB translation and en_CA
> could only have as a difference the currency (pounds or canadian dolars)
> and date format. Other small changes could also be done to reflect cultural
> differences like calling "taxi" or "cab" to a taxi.
>
> Following that logic, for software translations the european portuguese
> should be considered the base pt, where pt_BR would contain the differences
> for spelling and currency. pt_AO, pt_MZ, etc would probably only contain
> the currency change. A correctly configured system would thus look for the
> appropriate translation for pt_XX and then default to pt.
>
> As such, I would consider the Portuguese (European) translation to be just
> "Portuguese" and other derivations of the base language to be specific
> localizations that should be denoted as such, like "Portuguese
> (Brazilian)".
>
> B) To avoid confusion, when we list a language in job
>
> >    offers, I think that maybe we should modify the data base
> >    to use?:
> >
> >      pt_PT, Portuguese (Portugal?)
> >      pt_BR, Portuguese (Brazilian)
> >
> > instead of just:
> >
> >      pt, Portuguese
>
> Maybe you could offer the three possibilities, as they can fulfill
> different purposes.
> * When a member inserts their spoken languages, they should specify the
> "pt_PT" or "pt_BR" capabilities.
> * For companies/ONGs looking for a translator, they should be able to
> select "pt_PT", "pt_BR" or just "pt", as they could really desire a
> specific country translation or they could be happy with just something
> that could reach all the countries (pt_*).
>
> C) I suppose you use aspell to check the translations.
>
>
> Yes, I do, through gedit.
>
> P.S.: It seems http://www.gnu.org/home.pt.html is a Brazilian translation
> :)
>
>
> Yes, it is. :)
>
> Best regards,
>
> > Davi
>
> I hope I didn't bore you too much with the explanation/base for my opinion,
> and that it can be usefull for a decision-taking process..
>
> Best regards
>
> Duarte Loreto