translation into Dutch; help welcome

Hi,

I’m translating Ardour2 into Dutch. Obviously, because audio editing has a rich (English) nomenclature, this is not a trivial thing. To encourage some discussion/collective opinion forming on the translation I set up a wiki:
http://waits.cp.jku.at/mediawiki/index.php/Dutch_Ardour_translation_issues
It lists essential terms, and proposed Dutch translations. I would like to invite Dutch (or Dutch-speaking) Ardour users to take a look at it and add comments.

Many thanks in advance!

Maarten

If you don’t mind that flemish speaking persons also read it…

Well, I went through what was already there. The strange thing is that you are proposing to translate what you call “very specific terms”. Some of those terms indeed only relate to ardour, while others are more generally audio related. And this is the problem, they are very specific. Let me explain.

I would like to have each of these terms explained in plain dutch. That makes sense. You need to have important terms explained to a beginner in the language he masters best.

But translating those terms and useing them throughout a manual is counter-productive. Why? well, suppose that someone that learned ardour in dutch with all those very specific terms translated into something compleetely different is stuck and has to hit the internet for help. How far is he going to get with his knowledge of specific dutch ardour terms? Not very far. Same if he ever happens to come accross an international collaboration with other ardour users.

So I would suggest leaving the specific terms as they are. (you left most of them in english already or they are already accepted as such in dutch) but start the dutch manual with a clear explanation of those terms in dutch.

Remember “flodderschijf”: a proposed translation for floppy. Hardly anybody remembers that word ever exsisted.

Hi Havoc,

No objections to Flemish at all (sorry, I should have said Flemish/Dutch).

Thanks for your comments. I agree with you about the problem of getting international community support if you are not familiar with the English terms, to the point where I started doubting the use of using translated software in the first place. This problem is probably more acute for small languages like Flemish/Dutch, than for, say, Spanish.

The best policy to me seems, like you point out (tell me if I interpret you wrongly), find generally agreed upon translations for general audio-editing terms, while leaving terms that are specific to the design of Ardour untranslated. We could find out the translations of the former terms by looking at translated versions of other major audio-software (Cubase, Logic, Protools etc). I don’t know actually if there are Flemish/Dutch translations available for those programs. And if there are, whether these translations are anything to go by.

Maarten

Well, I would start the manual with an explanation of the terms and continue to use those terms in english but put them in italic or something like that.

I do remember seeing a dictionary with audio term, but I don’t remember if it was explicatif or translating. Was in a university library.

Honestly, I don’t think the applications you mention are translated. Might be a question to ask on the relevant forums. Most software I find that has been translated is OSS/freeware.

Is there a dutch translation or a dutch manual?

I made a Dutch .po file last year (the file that specifies translations for all language used in the ardour interface). I submitted it via the mantis system, but it was never included, probably because there were more urgent things to do. I haven’t touched it since May 2007, so it may need a little updating, feel free to do so:
http://waits.cp.jku.at/~maarten/downloads/nl_NL.po

Ok, thanks.

I have almost finished a dutch tutorial and I’m using the English and technical terms to avoid confusing. I don’t think we really need a translation of the gui of Ardour. I’ll put a list with translated words in the tutorial…