translate proper or common terminology [applies across languages] [was: Bahasa Indonesia Intent to Translate: Introduction to Web Accessibility]

[+ mailing list, since this is relevant to other translators]

Hi Fri,

Good questions. Replies below.

On 29-Aug-20 8:49 PM, Fri Rasyidi wrote:
> Hi Shawn,
> 
> I have two questions for you regarding the translation:
> 
>  1. In Indonesia, we have borrowed and proper Indonesian translation (e.g.: "E-mail" can be "E-mail" or "Surel", "Accessibility" can be "Aksesibilitas" or "Keterjangkauan"). As more people are more familiar with the borrowed translation, should I use the more popular terminology for the sake of easiness to understand than the proper ones?

Generally, yes, please use the more common/popular terminology for these translations, which are less formal documents.

However, there may be a case for using the proper terminology. Consider if for more formal documents, it might be better to use the proper terminology? For example, if a translation of the the web standard "Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG)" was developed as an "Authorized W3C Translation" to be used for official purposes (e.g., referenced in governmental policies), which translation of "accessibility" would be best in that formal standards document? Would it need to be the proper term, or could it be the more common/popular term?

Usually it would be good to use the same translated terminology in all documents. If it was decided that the formal documents should use the proper term, then we need to decide if it's best to:
* also use the proper term in the informal documents, for consistency
or,
* use the common term in the informal documents, even though it is inconsistent
And, if on first use in a document, we would want to include the other term with it, for example:
 Aksesibilitas ("Keterjangkauan")

I encourage you to create GitHub issues for any terms in question, and to ask for input on the issue from native speakers in the accessibility and disability field, translation professionals, and others. Here is the GitHub repo to use for those issues:
 https://github.com/w3c/translation-glossaries/issues

Here is an example of such an issue in another language:
 https://github.com/w3c/translation-glossaries/issues/3

Then once a decision is reached, we can add it to a Indonesia Translation Glossary for W3C documents.

Would you start an Indonesia Translation Glossary that lists open issues and decisions? Here is the place for it:
 https://github.com/w3c/translation-glossaries/blob/master/README.md

>  2. Indonesian is a very contextual language and especially for interfaces, I often need to see the context of how, where, or when some of these UI elements are used to make accurate translations. Is there any reference page where I can see the whole UIs being implemented? If not, I can still do guess works for now but the translations might need to be adjusted later; which I'll still be willing to do.

I have added more context information and links to examples to the .yml file. Here are updates:
 https://github.com/w3c/wai-website-data/commit/19e92da088f268e89f2be9749bce73e10c3f52e4#diff-9d31a970248a8964164d48b618b6060b
 
(I also added to our To Do list to create a sample page with examples of all of the UI words and phrases in context.)

Please ask me if you have additional questions. I am happy to point you to where specific words or phrases are used in context.

Best regards,
~Shawn

> 
> Looking forward to hearing from you.
> 
> Cheers,
> Fri.

Received on Monday, 31 August 2020 22:22:49 UTC