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Re: Translation error

From: Jukka K. Korpela <jkorpela@cs.tut.fi>
Date: Mon, 24 Feb 2014 13:20:12 +0200
Message-ID: <530B2AEC.40003@cs.tut.fi>
To: www-validator-css@w3.org
2014-02-23 21:37, Anypodetos wrote:

> Validating an invalid CSS gives the following message in the German
> version: "Entschuldigung! Es wurden die folgenden Fehler gefunden".
> "Entschuldigung" doesn't mean "Sorry" in the sense of "We are sorry to
> tell you...", which I assume is intended, but "We apologize". As the W3C
> wouldn't apologize for an error in a CSS I wrote, I suppose the message
> should be "Es tut uns Leid! ..." or "Bedaure! ...".

There are similar mistranslations in other languages, like the Spanish 
“Disculpas!”. The use of 1st person plural is also odd, since the 
document is not checked by a group of people but by a program.

The best approach would be to use simple language, as normally used in 
program error messages and warnings. For example:

The following errors were detected:

Yucca
Received on Monday, 24 February 2014 11:20:44 UTC

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