400328 - week-number in the today-pane

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Mozilla Localizations :: nl / Dutch, defect)

Description

[Bas van den Bosch]

The abbreviation for "week" in 0.7RC2 is KW (at least for the dutch l10n) it should be "wk"

Comment 1

[Stefan Sitter [:ssitter]]

It's translated as "KW" in 
http://lxr.mozilla.org/l10n-mozilla1.8/source/nl/calendar/chrome/calendar/calendar.properties#253

Comment 2

[Ton [:Tonnes]]

As English reads CW (for calendar week) and other languages use a similar localized abbreviation, I see no reason not to use KW (Kalenderweek). Is there any?

See http://lxr.mozilla.org/l10n/search?string=shortcalendarweek 

Comment 3

[Bas van den Bosch]

In the Netherlands 'Kalenderweek' is imho not a commonly used word, just 'Week' is the word we use...

Comment 4

[u81239]

I don’t really have a strong opinion, but I’d say ‘week’ is preferable (if it fits, is short enough), and otherwise ‘KW’ is fine with me.

Abbreviating week to wk seems a bit weird, but if you can point to places (e.g. in other software, media or a dictionary) where ‘wk’ is used, so that it’s clear there is some precedence and that ‘wk’ is a common way to abbreviate, that would help your case :).

~Grauw

Comment 5

[Bas van den Bosch]

Well, statistics from google when searching for 'week wk' and ommitting all kinds of sports (wk is also the abbreviation for world champignonship over here) gives ( http://tinyurl.com/2w82do ) 2180000 hits of which about 90% is really the abbreviation for week. Searching for 'week kw' and ommitting things like energy, power etc gives ( http://tinyurl.com/2nqoeo ) about 194.000 hits of which about 10% is really the abbreviation of week. Searching for the word kalenderweek (which is seldom used) it gives a grandtotal of 21.500 hits. Perhaps kalenderweek is a better word then the word week (which is commonly used) but the abbreviation kw is even more uncommon. 

Comment 6

[Ton [:Tonnes]]

Please be careful not to mix things up. This string concerns an abbreviation for ‘calendar week’ and not for ‘week’ only, like it is used in the month view. You may also have noticed in your search results the word ‘kalenderweek’ as well as its abbreviation is not as uncommon as one may think. Indeed Dutch speakers often _speak_ about e.g. ‘week 42’, but I’m sure this goes for English as well. Also, cw is as uncommon (and unofficial) for English as kw is for Dutch.

In this case, the Calendar developers have chosen to use this abbreviation within the today pane (or miniday-pane, implemented by bug 385900 and bug 388414) from the beginning - obviously with the purpose of keeping the pane as narrow as possible. If they had wanted it otherwise they would probably have chosen to use ‘week’ (or ‘wk’) instead, which is likely to fit, although that might not be true for other locales. Our goal is to stick to original texts as close as possible (or simply put: entirely), so we won’t deviate from a word choice easily just because we or a number of people think some other term suits us or the program better or by coincidence, and certainly not for cosmetic reasons in general.

So in short: if you prefer to see ‘week’ or ‘wk’ in the today pane, it may be best to change it locally and/or file a bug in order to have it changed in English first if you think you have a strong case. If that change is made, the Dutch version will gladly follow, and so will others.

Comment 7

[u81239]

Well, Google hits don’t really give a precedent. They’re too fuzzy, ‘week wk’ could easily be hits where people talk about ‘vorige week in het wk’, etc. I was thinking more in terms of ‘does Outlook use wk or kw’, ‘do scientific reference books use wk or kw’, and ‘does this-or-that Dutch (abbreviation) dictionary list wk or kw as an abbreviation for (calendar) week’. If you can show examples like those, you would have a better case. Otherwise, I don’t see why kw would be better or worse than wk, so there would be no reason to change, and it is preferable to keep using kw which is closer to the English original and also a more ‘normal’ type of abbreviation (an initialism).

Ton: well, I don’t agree with that, a translation can’t always be that literal. It could very well be that ‘week’ is used differently in Dutch than in English, and thus a different word choice would be justified. For one thing, week numbers are used pretty commonly in the Netherlands, but as far as I know outside of the Netherlands they are not used as much. So in English one might want to be more verbose by talking about calendar weeks as ‘calendar week’, while in Dutch you would simply talk about ‘week’. In English ‘cw’ might be the most common abbreviation for calendar week, while in Dutch it could be ‘wk’. In that case, I think we should definitely not stick to a literal ‘kw’ translation. But, as I said above, there needs to be some kind of evidence of this first :).

~Grauw

Comment 8

[u81239]

Attachment: Change ‘KW’ to ‘wk’

I looked into this a little more and I now agree with Bas that ‘wk’ is a very common abbreviation for week numbers while ‘KW’ is not.

I don’t have much to go on in print unfortunately, it is not a very commonly used abbreviation as just ‘week’ itself is already very short. But when looking closer at the results of the search queries Bas gave above I saw a lot of instances of ‘wk’ being used, while ‘kw’ was used very little. Also, now actually having installed Lightning 0.7RC2 (was still using 0.5) and seeing it in action (;p), I have to agree that I think wk would definitely be better.

This is regardless of the difference between ‘kalenderweek’ or simply ‘week’. Both are used commonly and easily understood, and in effect they have the same meaning when used in combination with a week number and can be used interchangeably. However, in abbreviated form, wk is much more prevalent. Abbreviations depend on the reader recognising them and remembering their meaning, so it is very important that we pick the common one (more so compared to regular words where the meaning can be understood even if you don’t use it frequently yourself).

Patch attached which can be used to apply this change. Please consider this my vote in support of this bug.

Comment 9

[u81239]

Attachment: Change ‘KW’ to ‘wk’

I looked into this a little more and I now agree with Bas that ‘wk’ is a very common abbreviation for week numbers while ‘KW’ is not.

I don’t have much to go on in print unfortunately, it is not a very commonly used abbreviation as just ‘week’ itself is already very short. But when looking closer at the results of the search queries Bas gave above I saw a lot of instances of ‘wk’ being used, while ‘kw’ was used very little. Also, now actually having installed Lightning 0.7RC2 (was still using 0.5) and seeing it in action (;p), I have to agree that I think wk would definitely be better.

This is regardless of the difference between ‘kalenderweek’ or simply ‘week’. Both are used commonly and easily understood, and in effect they have the same meaning when used in combination with a week number and can be used interchangeably. However, in abbreviated form, wk is much more prevalent. Abbreviations depend on the reader recognising them and remembering their meaning, so it is very important that we pick the common one (more so compared to regular words where the meaning can be understood even if you don’t use it frequently yourself).

Patch attached which can be used to apply this change. Please consider this my vote in support of this bug.

Comment 10

[Ton [:Tonnes]]

Laurens: I think we agree about this issue more than you think, although you appear to think we don’t. What you said about the justification of word choice in other languages is what I consider to be the only exception, which is definetely not the case here according to the investigation I did twice now. And of course I know about (too) literal translation, we had that discussion before, and so it came up again today on irc.

In any case: even if Outlook or some other program would use wk here _and_ considering the fact people _speak_ about week numbers, and not write (!) either or not in table or column views, I see no reason to change the current form. Furthermore the problem, if it can be called one, is structural enough to propose a change for English even if that is not your native language, and no reason to deviate right now, as said. Besides, bug 396898 is still open in which an additional tooltip is suggested for the cw string and its clearness (and the cause of choosing cw in the first place), so there’s another reason to wait or leave this as it is. If this is how it looks in 0.7, so it should for Dutch.

Therefore proposing both the patch and this bug as invalid. I have made a comment in bug 396898 proposing a CW->wk change though, hoping the issue will fix itself.

Sidenote: I’m sorry to say it’s not the first time you appear to change your opinion during the discussion we have, i.o.w. you prefer B if I say A while you seemed to prefer A or have no strong opinion before. Not to mention this is your first contribution to the entire 0.7 release and based on an opinion of 5 minutes of Calendar 0.7 viewing, Google searches you don’t consider to be a good source (which is true) and a developers opinion on irc stating we have a free hand in doing what’s best for Dutch, while your opinion is still based on a number of assumptions and a bug with 0 votes filed by 1 person..

Comment 11

[Koen Hendrickx]

'Kalenderweek' isn't natural dutch to me. I also cannot find it in our translation. For this, i think it's better to stick to our own translation. (so people don't think, 'where stands 'kw' for. Not everybody will use the tooltip.) sorry then it isn't litteral, but for me it has to feel naturally also...

I also searched for 'calendarweek' and i don't find it in english as well. 
So i agree to wait till bug 396898 is cleared out. 

Comment 12

[u81239]

Oh, very nice that last paragraph, Ton. If you’re ‘sorry to say’, then just keep it to yourself.

1. I am allowed to change my opinion, in fact, I think it is a good thing I am flexible enough to do so. In my previous comments I had not looked at the actual appearance of the string (given that I was still running 0.5 and wasn’t able to find the location where this appeared in that), and the most important thing I wanted to convey was that it would help Bas’s case if he would provide some quotations of ‘wk’ versus ‘KW’ (and that Google hits alone is a bit weak). Now that I have looked into it more deeply, I agree with Bas. What exactly is the problem with that? Should I pretend I still think differently?

2. As a matter of fact this is not my first contribution but my second (bug 396898 comment 63), but what’s your point? If you need it pointed out, I have contributed much to Mozilla localisation in general, especially after the release of Firefox 1.0 where I did a lot of re-translating, and after that I’ve done and am continuing to do a lot of reviews and smaller patch submissions for all Mozilla products. I don’t spend as much time as I used to, but then there isn’t as much that needs to be done anymore compared to when Firefox 1.0 was out. I can’t believe I’m having to defend myself in this manner here, great way to show your appreciation for all the time I’ve put in Mozilla l10n over the years.

3. 1 bug and no votes? Come on, the fact that a bug is filed at all is already an indicator that the current translation bothers some person enough to file a bug for it. There’s not even a release yet, only few people have tested it. Plus it’s the Dutch localisation, used by relatively few tech-savvy people, so we don’t get much bug external reports in general. You can’t expect a bug like this to get many dupes and votes. But hey, I voted on this bug (even though I already expressed a vote verbally in my comment above), just for you.

If you don’t have anything better to defend your ‘point’ than through a personal attack, just say nothing. Somehow yesterday you got irritated when I asked on #calendar about whether CW shouldn’t be translated to wk, which you yourself said someone should do in comment 6 (and you have done now yourself in another bug). I really don’t understand why.

Finally, I stand by my argumentation along with the patch above (esp. the part about abbreviation recognition) and disagree with putting this bug on invalid. Next time I would appreciate comments without personal attacks. Thank you.

~Grauw

Comment 13

[Bas van den Bosch]

Glad I'm not on the l10n-team :-) 

Concluding this discussion I hope, I see everyone is positive about wk though we should closely watch bug 396898 to see what's happening there. That bug however focuses on the tooltip and minimonth, not about CW/KW. In that bug mvl also proposes to use wk instead of KW. So I suggest taking tha patch for now too.

Comment 14

[Pete Riley]

1) For US English, I agree that it's more natural to say "week #" than "calendar week #".  The word 'calendar' is superfluous.

2) Wk is a common abbreviation in the US and I think that it's best.  Cw means nothing but I can figure it out in the context of a calendar program (but actually I originally thought that it meant "current week", not "calendar week").  FYI, here's an "official" US definition of these two abbreviations:

cw. or CW.  abbreviation
1.Continuous wave

wk.  abbreviation
1.Week. 
2.Work.

Excerpted from The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Third Edition Copyright © 1992 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Electronic version licensed from Lernout & Hauspie Speech Products N.V., further reproduction and distribution restricted in accordance with the Copyright Law of the United States. All rights reserved.

Comment 15

[Simon Paquet [:sipaq]]

This bug and its patch has nothing to do with the original English implementation.

Moving back to Mozilla Localizations. It is the sole choice of the localizer whether he wants to work with abbreviations or not. The issue here is also covered by bug 396898.

Comment 16

[Tim Maks van den Broek [:mad_maks]]

wat is de status van deze bug?

Comment 17

[u81239]

The current string still says KW.

Personally I still prefer ‘wk’, but there is no resolution either way, and thus no change. Either we leave it like this, or Ton changes his mind, or you make the decision.

~Grauw

Comment 18

[Ton [:Tonnes]]

I think it could basically become wontfix (as it is not a bug in the first place, but a l10n change request). It’s probably best to respect the author’s choice and leave it as it is for now, and pick this up if needed, following the outcome of bug 400328.

Comment 19

[u81239]

You probably mean bug 396898.

Comment 20

[u81239]

Oh, and it is perfectly fine for this to be a bug in Bugzilla. The term ‘bug’ is not restricted to the traditional sense of the word.

Comment 22

[Tim Maks van den Broek [:mad_maks]]

can we close this bug?

Comment 23

[Bas van den Bosch]

imho not, the issue still stands. Most people tend to want "wk" (also seeing bug 396898), awaiting the outcome of bug 396898, this bug is not fixed yet...

Comment 24

[Joep Meijer]

(In reply to comment #22)
> can we close this bug?

I think it can be closed. I thought it was a translation error.

Comment 25

[Ton [:Tonnes]]

I guess we can. As said in bug 543039 comment 2, the dependency on bug 396898 is rather groundless, as that one may take another few years to get fixed. When the en-US string changes or gets dropped (whether or not by that bug), we’ll notice anyway and follow.

Comment 26

[Bas van den Bosch]

http://www.vandale.nl/vandale/opzoeken/woordenboek/?zoekwoord=kalenderweek
doesn't exist in Van Dale.

Comment 27

[Tim Maks van den Broek [:mad_maks]]

When it change in source we can reopen this bug.