> > -it is wrongly named : you should use fr.po rather than fr_FR.po and > >I don't really understand why it was renamed that way as former > >versions were correct in that matter > > Well, fr_FR is supposed to be french french, and using fr.po would > close the door to fr_CA or whatever (even if there are little chances > that someone spend time for do these translations). > > In many packages packages got such names. > > In think we switched to such name after: > > http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=200861
The case for Portuguese is different. It is established practice that Portuguese spoken in Portugal and former colonies is different from Brazilian Portuguese and translation use the country variant to distinguish between both. However, for French, the language is the very same (at least according to standardization issues) among all french-speaking countries. The debian-l10n-french team is a team of francophones users and so are all french localisation teams I'm aware of in free software. So, it's very likely that you'll never get any fr_BE, fr_CA, fr_CH, fr_LU translations. The benefit bringed by possibles variant is highly counterbalanced by the missing translation for not covered locales. By using fr_FR.po, you're indeed limiting your french translation to French users. Users from Quebec, Belgium, Switzerland and Luxembourg will just get English. For Debian-specific translation, the current policy, blessed by debian-i18n is using language codes only with a few currently "registered" exceptions: -pt vs pt_BR -zh_CN vs zh_TW (Chinese is a special case where one has to distinguish between two written forms) -very recently : pa_IN vs pa_PK for Punjabi which has two written forms The latter two are indeed tricks as country modifiers should indeed be used, but this is a very well established practice now....and, before you ask, no this is not written in any policy document. Common sense may however be applied here : as long as you keep having a fr_FR translation, you depriving other french speaking users a good French translation. If, in the future, you feel for the need of variants, you can still keep a fr.po file and add fr_FR, fr_CA, whatever....which all have to be maintained.* Would you indeed imagine renaming the es.po file to es_ES.po and then revet your Latin American users to English. I guess you don't want this. > > Anyway, you'll find attached a new version of the translation > >file. I used there the usual translations used by the Debian french > >localisation team, which sometimes involves some rewrites (use of > >non-breaking spaces when appropriate, use of "superutilisateur", > >avoid using first person, s/bug/bogue and so on). > > Well, I'm quite confident in my understanding of french typography > rules (in particular, I doubt someone would be able to catch > errouneous ponctuation in what I write in French - that's the kind of > mistakes I simply do not do, unlike grammar mistakes and alike). Well, then you probably want to check spaces before colons in the original fr_FR.po files..:-) > > If there's first person usage, I think a bug should be posted against > the whole package (unless this first person usage exists only in the > translation). Where did you find it? In the French translation : "nous ne pouvons obtenir des données valables" vs "we cannot find". Who is "we" ? :-) Here, I very often strongly discourage the use of first person in either original strings, or translations. Software documentation, user interaction and so on should be regarded with the same writing style than publications : be neutral and factual.... Yes, this should certainly trigger a bug report for the English strings as well. > > About superutilisateur instead of "root user", why not. But it would > be more precisely a translation of superuser... because in any cases, > the root user is the root user, called root in French... > Anyway, I updated the string to catch this suggestions. The French l10n team has established this practice. For instance, this is how the installer prompt for the root password. The general rationale is avoiding jargon as much as possible. > > About bug, I do not really want to translate it "bogue" (ugly and > ununderstandable for a french, unless he guess from what he knows of > the similar english word - that clearly defeats translation purpose) > but anomalie. And there are already in debian packages that use this > translation (like pan). Well, I'm afraid to say that Debian packages are not always consistent with regard to French translations......the only exception being the packages where translations are handleed by the maintainer and not the l10n team. The team work not only brings manpower : it also brings a guarantee for consistency all along localisation work, which strongly gives users a feeling of professionalism....this is why I would insist for "bogue" even if I happen to say "bug" quite often. > I'm checking a diff with your version to find others changes (but as > said, I cannot applies just as it it, as it appears that we are not > working on the same version, considering the number of translated > strings you have in yours). The last one I sent was based on what is in the archive.... Anyway, my main intent here is motivating you, as maintainer, to get your own translation reviewed by the French team, even if you're a native french speaker. I'm not saying nor writing that your French is "wrong", far from this....but doing so would bring in some general consistency with other pieces of Debian (and quite often with other pieces of free software in general). About "Internet" : my suggested change was guided by established practices from the Debian l10n-french team....after a lot of discussions. Not all team members agree completely with that but we indeed keep consistency.....so it's up to you, of course, like everything.
