I agree with others that some parts of pacman's output is quite crappy. It is probably the common case in which some line is totally self-evident to devs, quite cryptically to translators, and almost incomprehensible to users. I think that we should set up a wiki-page or a simple todo-list on that - to ensure that this issue will not get lost in 3.3.1. Am Wednesday 29 July 2009 22:01:25 schrieb Roman Kyrylych:

Hi!

During my translation of pacman/libalpm files I've noticed a significant number of inconsistencies and messages that are difficult to translate to a language that is quite different from Western European languages without knowing in what context they are used and what kind of text can hide behind %s. (e.g. what "Held by %s" is supposed to mean? if translated directly to my language without specifying a type of %s object the meaning will be confusing).

To all pacman committers: _please_ use consistent and descriptive text. I am sure that some messages could be made more specific, not only simplifying the work of translators, but also understanding by users.

In addition, it would be easier for translators if some native English speaker could check .pot files before string freeze. It seems to me that there may be some duplicates removed, and alot of related messages made more consistent.

I understand that text cosmetics is not a top priority when developing some new feature, but doing some text cleanup before string freeze (while keeping in mind that every single line of text may and will be translated to a (very) different language, _and_ trying to make the text look clear for most users) does worth some time spent. I can do such work for next pacman releases (not sure if I can "generate" good English messages since it's not my native language, but at least I can point to a text that's not clear to understand/translate etc.)

I know it's too late to make such changes now, but I hope this can be done for future pacman releases.

2009/7/29, Roman Kyrylych :

Hi!

During my translation of pacman/libalpm files I've noticed a significant number of inconsistencies and messages that are difficult to translate to a language that is quite different from Western European languages without knowing in what context they are used and what kind of text can hide behind %s. (e.g. what "Held by %s" is supposed to mean? if translated directly to my language without specifying a type of %s object the meaning will be confusing).

To all pacman committers: _please_ use consistent and descriptive text. I am sure that some messages could be made more specific, not only simplifying the work of translators, but also understanding by users.

In addition, it would be easier for translators if some native English speaker could check .pot files before string freeze. It seems to me that there may be some duplicates removed, and alot of related messages made more consistent.

I understand that text cosmetics is not a top priority when developing some new feature, but doing some text cleanup before string freeze (while keeping in mind that every single line of text may and will be translated to a (very) different language, _and_ trying to make the text look clear for most users) does worth some time spent. I can do such work for next pacman releases (not sure if I can "generate" good English messages since it's not my native language, but at least I can point to a text that's not clear to understand/translate etc.)

I know it's too late to make such changes now, but I hope this can be done for future pacman releases.

I totally agree here. -- Arch Linux Developer http://www.archlinux.org http://www.archlinux.it

On Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 10:01 PM, Roman Kyrylych wrote:

Hi!

During my translation of pacman/libalpm files I've noticed a significant number of inconsistencies and messages that are difficult to translate to a language that is quite different from Western European languages without knowing in what context they are used and what kind of text can hide behind %s. (e.g. what "Held by %s" is supposed to mean? if translated directly to my language without specifying a type of %s object the meaning will be confusing).

To all pacman committers: _please_ use consistent and descriptive text. I am sure that some messages could be made more specific, not only simplifying the work of translators, but also understanding by users.

In addition, it would be easier for translators if some native English speaker could check .pot files before string freeze. It seems to me that there may be some duplicates removed, and alot of related messages made more consistent.

I understand that text cosmetics is not a top priority when developing some new feature, but doing some text cleanup before string freeze (while keeping in mind that every single line of text may and will be translated to a (very) different language, _and_ trying to make the text look clear for most users) does worth some time spent. I can do such work for next pacman releases (not sure if I can "generate" good English messages since it's not my native language, but at least I can point to a text that's not clear to understand/translate etc.)

I know it's too late to make such changes now, but I hope this can be done for future pacman releases.

Help is definitely welcome on this issue :)