On Sun, 8 Nov 2009, Matthieu Moy wrote:

> Nicolas Sebrecht <nicolas.s.dev@gmx.fr> writes:
> 
> >> > - make some consistency changes
> >> >  * s/diff/différences/
> >> >  * s/patch/correctif/ everywhere
> >
> > I disagree here. Words like "diff", "commit", "patch", etc should be
> > kept as is. Translation of those terms make things harder for the users.
> 
> Metoo.
> 
> One day or another, the user will have to face the words "diff",
> "commit" and "patch" even in a 100% french-speaking context (for
> example when requesting help and someone answering "open a terminal
> and type 'git commit --whatever'" or so).
> 
> Matching the command-line concepts and the GUI concepts is made really
> hard by over-translating.

Striking a good balance is the key.  Not translating enough might simply 
look "cheap" to a new user who was not exposed to the concepts in the 
first place.

It is not like if we were facing issues like:

"Made in Turkey" -> "Fait en dinde"

"arm rest and pad assembly" -> "armer le repos et rembourer l'assemblée"

It's like those stu**d people who decided that "email" was too hard to 
translate.  So they declared that "email" was "imél" in French.  
Fortunately some non European people came up with a refreshing idea and 
translated "email" into "courriel" instead.  And with a step back, you 
must admit that "courriel" is so much clearer and more descriptive 
semantically.

Therefore I think that it is a good thing to _try_ to translate stuff 
appropriately.  but this is often much harder than it may seem.

> (and BTW, "correctif" is not a very good translation of "patch", since
> a patch is not necessarilly a correction of something).

In this case I think "retouche" would be a better choice.


Nicolas