Re: finished arabic translation of web stylesheets homepage

Hello Axel,

On Monday 24 August 2009, Axel Friedrich wrote:
> Dear list, dear Coralie, dear Bert,
>
> the arabic translation is ready:
>
> original: http://www.w3.org/Style/
> translated document: http://www.webstyles.ae.org/Style/index.html

It may be that certain English parts in the document need to be enclosed 
in
    <span dir=ltr>...</span>

I've found two cases:

The final slash of the URL "http://www.w3.org/Style/" is shown on the 
left instead of on the right, because it is followed by Arabic letters. 
Writing it as 

    <span dir=ltr>http://www.w3.org/Style/</span>

seems to help. (Putting the dir=ltr on the enclosing A element also 
works.)

A similar problem seems to occur with the parentheses around "(Abstract 
Programming Interface)" which could be written as

    <span dir=ltr>(Abstract Programming Interface)</span>

But maybe in that case the problem is different. It looks as if the 
translator forgot to translate some words in that sentence.

I also wonder why there are BR tags in the translation that are not in 
the original. Do you know why that is? If the translator prefers an 
empty line between paragraphs instead of an indented first line, I can 
easily add that to the style sheet instead.

And something strange happened with the link to 
news:comp.infosystems.www.authoring.stylesheets
The prefix "news:" disappeared and the dots turned into "¬"

It should be this:

    <a dir=ltr
    href="news:comp.infosystems.www.authoring.stylesheets">
    comp.&shy;infosystems.&shy;www.&shy;authoring.&shy;stylesheets</a>.

>
> original: http://www.w3.org/Style/CSS/
> translated document: http://www.webstyles.ae.org/Style/CSS/index.html

There are some broken links that you can't do much about, but there are 
three that are errors in the translation:

  bert@w3.org        -> mailto:bert@w3.org
  www-style@w3.org   -> http://www.w3.org/Mail/Lists.html#www-style
  daniel@glazman.org -> (there should be no link)

>
> original: http://www.w3.org/Style/CSS/learning
> translated document:
> http://www.webstyles.ae.org/Style/CSS/learning.html

Not everything seems to have been translated:

1) The phrase "chapter 2 of Lie & Bos or Dave Raggett’s intro to CSS" 
was not translated. Maybe the translator didn't understand the 
original? Here is the full sentence in different words. Maybe this is 
easier to translate:

    For a quick introduction to CSS, try the
    <a href="http://www.w3.org/Style/LieBos2e/enter/">
    second chapter</a>
    of the
    <a href="http://www.w3.org/Style/CSS/learning.html#LieBos1999">
    book by Lie and Bos,</a>
    or try the
    <a href="http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/Guide/Style">
    introduction to CSS by Dave Raggett.</a>

2) The section with links to non-English articles wasn't translated 
either. That is a not a big deal, but in principle, the following three 
things can be translated in that section:

a) all the words "by"
b) all the parts in parentheses
c) all the English names of languages (after the "/" in the DT elements)

I've tried to mark-up the original to make it clear what can be 
translated and what should remain unchanged. The parts that should 
remain unchanged have either a class=notranslate or a lang= attribute. 
(I haven't marked all people's names, but of course they cannot be 
translated either.)

There are also some errors in URLs:

  cssdesign@itlists.org -> http://itlists.org/mailman/listinfo/cssdesign
  griffon@canit.se      -> mailto:griffon@canit.se

>
> original: http://www.w3.org/Style/CSS/Buttons
> translated document:
> http://www.webstyles.ae.org/Style/CSS/Buttons/index.html

The final parenthesis of "(W3C)" is reversed, because it is followed by 
Arabic letters. Maybe the fix is a SPAN like this: 

    <span dir=ltr><a href="http://www.w3.org/">World Wide Web
    Consortium</a> (W3C)</span>

but I'm not sure what an Arabic reader would expect exactly. Maybe a 
better solution is to rephrase the sentence and avoid the parentheses 
altogether, or put an Arabic word between "World Wide Web Consortium" 
and "W3C," maybe the Arabic equivalent of "or" or "also known as."

Also, the structure of the document seems to have changed. Where the 
original had LI elements, the translation has BR and explicit bullet 
characters. Is that because of a problem with the style sheet? In that 
case I'd like to fix the style sheet.

>
> original: http://www.w3.org/Style/CSS/Buttons/Menu
> translated document:
> http://www.webstyles.ae.org/Style/CSS/Buttons/Menu/index.html

The link back to the original points to 
http://www.w3.org/Style/CSS/Buttons instead of 
http://www.w3.org/Style/CSS/Buttons/Menu

There is an error in the style part: #white should be #fff

(Not your fault. That error has always been there, since twelve(!) years 
ago. The style rule is not used anywhere, so we didn't notice; and we 
apparently never validated the page either...)

Like the Buttons page, this one has many BR tags where the original has 
LI. Do you know why?

>
> I linked all CSS files directly from w3.org, so you can change the
> reading direction any time. But, as the work was done by an egypt
> webmaster, I suppose there is nothing wrong with the current style.



Bert
-- 
  Bert Bos                                ( W 3 C ) http://www.w3.org/
  http://www.w3.org/people/bos                               W3C/ERCIM
  bert@w3.org                             2004 Rt des Lucioles / BP 93
  +33 (0)4 92 38 76 92            06902 Sophia Antipolis Cedex, France

Received on Monday, 24 August 2009 14:54:33 UTC