On Sat, Mar 10, 2007 at 02:42:22AM +0100, cobaco (aka Bart Cornelis) wrote: > On Friday 09 March 2007, Steve Langasek wrote: > > Can I ask why a number of sentences in the English text that were phrased > > as requests have been turned into questions in the translation?
> sure, basically that's the result of a discussion on debian-l10n-dutch back > in september 2003. Brief overview of the consensus in that discussion is > that: > - the literal translation of the "Please select/enter ..." (which we started > with) has to formal a connotation for most people, making it sound weird > when written (at least in most places, that's less so in the middle of a > paragraph). > - Leaving out the please in the translation is also undesirable as that > makes it an imperative, where it's a polite request/gentle direction (when > speaking you'd add inflection to make that clear, but that is obviously > not possible in writing) > -> the best solution in most cases seems to be to make it a question form Ok. > I'm curious, and a bit puzzled though. gcide defines request as: > 1. The act of asking for anything desired; expression of > desire or demand; solicitation; prayer; petition; > entreaty. > [1913 Webster] > so I would expect going from request -> question would be a style issue > mostly, but since you asked about it I'm guessing there's some subtle > difference to a native speaker? Well, the one gives the user instructions, the other asks a question; asking a question seems to me that it will usually be a repeat of the short description? Anyway, yes, it is a style question -- I just know that the question style is a style that Christian has specifically discouraged the use of in English. :) -- Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world. [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.debian.org/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
