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Re: translating HOWTOs to hebrew
I agree that translating HOW-TOs is a good idea.
However, before we fire up the word-processors there are things that must
be considered. Mostly, quality and consistency. The latter is significant
in the use of terminology, and in just how far and deep the translation
goes. It should obvious that commands shouldn't be translated, but just
how many of the other tech terms should be? Neither a 100% Hebrew
Academy compliant, nor the the pidgin we often use to converse amongst
ourselves are very readable, just to take two extremes. As for quality,
anything less than high quality would do more harm than good.
Uri
On Thu, 12 Nov 1998, Eli Marmor wrote:
> (The quotations were quoted from 3 different messages):
>
> > here is a (hopefully) "marmor-compliant" response:
>
> Well, I didn't ask anybody to be my spokesman ;-)
>
> Anyway, there are Linux books and guides even in Arabic, and I
> don't see any reason why Hebrew should suffer. For example, Khalid
> Baheyeldin's book ( http://lwn.net/1998/1112/arabic.html ).
>
> > Let's not become M$. Let's keep it in English.
>
> I don't accept that. And if people at Microsoft like pizza (at
> least according to Ira's report), does it mean we should avoid
> pizza? In addition, Microsoft has English versions of its products
> too; Does it mean that Linux should not support English ???
>
> > Well, I think that if our newbie doesn't even have basic English
> > capabilities, Linuxis not the right choice.
>
> Almost everybody knows English; The problem is different:
> When a newbie sees an English installation guide of hundreds pages,
> he gives up the installation. It is frightened. And even after
> completing the installation, when he is going to set-up the various
> tools, such as PPP (since everybody in these days must connect to
> an ISP and uses Internet), he sees again these longish English HOW-
> TOs, and gives up. Often he doesn't remove the Linux partition, but
> just returns toWindows and forgets Linux.
>
> P.S.: I think Gilad deserves a "Yishar Koach" for his idea.
> --
> Eli Marmor
>