Romanian translation

[Dimi Paun]

On Tue, 2009-04-28 at 00:23 -0400, Michael Stefaniuc wrote:
> Salut!
> 
> Dimitriu Petru wrote:
> > Well words like Cancel or Save or Open or Close can be translated in three ways:
> > - the first is when you translate them using an imperative just like
> > you're commanding your computer to do that, like speaking to a person
> > face to face (Renunţă, Salvează, Deschide, Închide, etc which mean
> > (You) cancel, (You) save, (You) open, (You) close etc.)
> > - the second one is using a noun to define the action that will happen
> > when pressing the button or the control etc. (Renunţare, Salvare,
> > Deschidere, Închidere)
> > - the third one is using a verb that denotes that the computer is
> > proposing you to do something by pressing a button or a control etc.
> > (Renunţă/Renunţaţi, Salvează/Salvaţi, Deschide/Deschideţi,
> > Închide/Închideţi)
> > 
> > I prefer the second way because I don't like speaking to a computer
> > like you speak to your friend or younger brother and I also don't like
> > that the computer speaks to the user like a person. The computer is a
> > machine, it doesn't have a soul, people do have.
> But the first form seems to be the correct one. And that's what I used.
> See http://i18n.ro/Ghidul_traducatorului_de_software; I have seen other
> translation guides that have basically the same rules on how to "speak"
> to the computer (i have those bookmarked but I'm far away from my home
> computer).
> 
> The computer isn't a human being but that's irrelevant; there was
> nothing in the non-living world that required interaction with natural
> language. And it seems that natural language interaction in Romanian is
> better done by treating the computer like a person. The noun form really
> sounds awkward.

As a native Romanian speaker, I agree with Michael 100%. The 2nd and 3rd
forms sound awkward. But beyond our personal preferences, I think the
Romanian user is best served by a consistent translation across
systems. 

If we let our momentary preferences dictate the form for every
system that gets translated, folks will get confused, and few will
appreciate the noun vs. verb based nuances  :)

-- 
Dimi Paun <dimi at lattica.com>
Lattica, Inc.