227582 - File>New cascading menu requires localizers to think or deviate from English localization

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(SeaMonkey :: UI Design, defect)

Description

[Veronica Loell]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; sv-SE; rv:1.4) Gecko/20030624
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; sv-SE; rv:1.4) Gecko/20030624

The consistent use of cascading menues, to in effect use variables in the
clauses that needs to be translated, results in the translators nor being able
to do their job properly. 

A simple example:
"New | Navigator-window"
"New | Composer-page"

A correct Swedish translation would be:
"Nytt | navigatorfönster"
"Ny | Composersida"

The problem is that in Swedish, the translations for "window" and "page" produce
different forms of the swedish word for "new". 

So we will get either "ny navigatorfönster" or "nytt composersida". This form of
grammatical error is something that a very small child that have just learned to
speak Swedish will not make. So the effect is pretty grave in the resulting look
of the application. This is _not_ an isolated issue, most languages have more
wordforms than English, so translating something out of context is not possible.
I can't think of any language that is so close to English that this would not be
an issue, but I'm sure there is at least one. The majority of the translations
will be faced with this issue however.

Since the words of the translated clause is in effect used as variables that can
take any word, it is _not possible_ for a translator to produce an acceptable
translation. It is like trying to translate a text word for word without any
thought for the context. Anyone that has some knowledge of more than one
language should think about this for a moment in case this bug seems "silly".

This means that for an application to be truly multilingual, the changes need to
be made in the english source, or at least the message-id's if they are not the
same as the english variant. As many open source projects, Mozilla is very
multilingual, lets make an effort to produce an application that is indeed
translatable!

Veronica Loell - www.nakawe.se, nakawe.sf.net


Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.
2.
3.

Comment 1

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

This isn't a bug in the implementation of the menu widgets themselves -- just in
the use of menus by XPFE.

I wonder how NS4 dealt with this localization issue....

Comment 2

[Simon Montagu :smontagu]

Are there any platform localization guidelines that address this issue? In some
languages the problem seems even worse, e.g. in Hebrew where putting the
adjective before the noun is a laughable error ("ivrit kasha safa").

Comment 3

[Simon Montagu :smontagu]

http://lists.gnome.org/archives/gnome-i18n/2002-May/msg00149.html suggests

New -> New window    Ny -> Nytt fönster
       New folder          Ny mapp

A response suggests "New object" in the top level menu, which I don't like
because I don't think it would be meaningful to users.

Comment 4

[Veronica Loell]

I did have a look in the localization guidlines and it mentioned nothing about
this sort of issue. In some really bad cases (which I have not seen in Mozilla)
this issue is repeated by the use of variables in places other than cascading
menues.
In this specific instance my preference would be to keep the "new" in the top
menu and simply repeat it in the cascading menu. There certainly is no need to
add any words in the top menu, just make sure that there is a full clause to
translate.
It would be beneficial to have this issue discussed in the guidlines however as
it is not evident for a person that for example speaks only English.

Comment 5

[Veronica Loell]

Sorry I meant the internationalization guidlines, since it is a matter of
preparing for localization. Or perhaps even in the general user interface
guidlines if any such are present?

Comment 6

[Tsahi Asher]

as hebrew localizer, i agree that there is a problem. in hebrew, it is combined
of what Veronica described and what Simon described. in MS-Office, selecting
file|new will take you to a dialog asking you what kind of a document you want
to create. knowing mozilla.org, i think such a drastic change won't happen in
our life time, and besides, new tab is not creating a new document (file). i
think the solution in comment 3 will also be suitable.

Comment 7

[timeless]

Localizations are not required to strictly adhere to the text used by the
English localization. If you need to vary text in order to make it sensible,
then do so. Our English text should at best be considered as a suggestion. You
will find many bugs complaining about it.

Just because we use:      Doesn't mean you can not or should not use:
New -> Window             Ny -> Nytt fönster
       Folder                   Ny mapp

In fact, it seems clear to me that you should. <- Advice

There's no problem in the xpfe entities which prevents you from doing so. If we
actually did something as foolish as <menuitem label="&new; &window;"> then you
could complain about us requiring you to use a prefix if it turned out that you
didn't want/need such a prefix or if it would cause problems. But that's not the
case. The "New" item in the File menu and the "Window" and <whatever> items in
the new submenu can all be changed independently. <- Reason for resolution.

For reference, consider:

Tools>Web Development>JavaScript Console
There's nothing about this that resembles a sentence. Nor are any of the items
closely tied or related. They're just things. Whether this is good or bad
doesn't really matter, it just is.

Comment 8

[Veronica Loell]

Thank you for making my case clearer. If you look in the dtd's you will find:

tasksOverlay.dtd/48: <!ENTITY javaScriptConsoleCmd.label            
"JavaScript-konsol">
tasksOverlay.dtd/59: <!ENTITY webDevelopment.label "Webbutveckling">

navigator.dtd/47: <!ENTITY browserCmd.label	"Nytt navigationsfönster">
navigator.dtd/49: <!ENTITY tabCmd.label "Navigationsflik">

For your example there is a nice separate entity for the first menuitem. There
is not separate entity for "New". What you want us to do is write
"Nytt Nytt navigatorfönster"?

Is there a reason for this drastically different behaviour? 

If there was in fact an entity for "New" then your suggestion makes sense. As it
is it has absolutely no bearing on the issue at hand.

Comment 9

[Veronica Loell]

Sorry, I missed the entry of
utilityOverlay.dtd/41: <!ENTITY newMenu.label	"Nytt">

However, the word "Nytt" that is apperantly already present or some items in my
translation does _not_ show up in the menu at all. So there does seem to be a bug?

Comment 10

[Veronica Loell]

It would seem that I had not correctly identified the item responsible for the
cascaded navigator-window meny item. Sorry about that. If one does in fact
identify all of the overlay* and main files it shoudl be possible to create an
acceptable translation.