Re: [1.8.0] use 'stage' term consistently

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
To: "Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason" <avarab@gmail.com>
Cc: "Felipe Contreras" <felipe.contreras@gmail.com>,
	"Matthieu Moy" <Matthieu.Moy@grenoble-inp.fr>,
	git@vger.kernel.org, "Jonathan Nieder" <jrnieder@gmail.com>,
	"Jeff King" <peff@peff.net>, "Scott Chacon" <schacon@gmail.com>,
	"Paolo Ciarrocchi" <paolo.ciarrocchi@gmail.com>,
	"Jakub Narębski" <jnareb@gmail.com>,
	"Johannes Schindelin" <johannes.schindelin@gmx.de>,
	"Piotr Krukowiecki" <piotr.krukowiecki.news@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [1.8.0] use 'stage' term consistently
Date: Mon, 07 May 2012 21:06:44 -0700	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <7v62c71fl7.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <CACBZZX6u7rJer+tSqPddKdAF=bd216pZH5qUQNcrdr4nCmT46Q@mail.gmail.com> (=?utf-8?B?IsOGdmFyIEFybmZqw7Zyw7A=?= Bjarmason"'s message of "Mon, 7 May 2012 22:05:27 +0200")

Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason <avarab@gmail.com> writes:

> On Mon, May 7, 2012 at 7:52 PM, Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> wrote:
>
>> ... I actually was having a hard time to come up with Japanese
>> translation (not that I have plan to contribute to ja_JP.po), as the
>> shipping/logistics term "to stage" does not cleanly translate to the
>> language without unnecessary connotation that imply what is described is
>> something the our "index" actually is _not_.
>
> Because there's no equivalent of "stage" in Icelandic that would make
> sense as both a verb and a noun. There's a word that means "step" (as
> in a step on a ladder"), but it doesn't make much sense to say that
> you'd "step something".

Japanese stopped inventing their own words for imported concepts mid 20th
century and mostly use English words phonetically transliterated these
days. The word "index" is quite well understood: that which points at the
information given a headword that refers to it, which is exactly what the
"index" we have is. On the other hand, "to stage/staging area" is not as
widely used outside the narrow shipping/logistics circles.

I actually was hoping that Japanese was a minority to have trouble with
the word "stage" (and my not being a professional translator did not help
the matter), and we could declare "it is stage from now on", update the
documentation, rename the .git/index to .git/stage (not strictly needed,
and I am not looking forward to it, as it would be a messy and pointless
transition with backward compatibility headaches) and be done with it, if
we wanted to.

But sadly it seems that it may not be the case, at least unless you are
familiar with the shipping/logicstics lingo in English, if you are not
native.  I didn't necessarily wanted to use "stage", it is "sad" because a
new word-hunt may be needed for a replacement to "index" (as "stage" may
not be a good word for i18n audience), and then we would need to keep
"index", "stage" and that third word as interchangeable terms.

Spliting the userbase by introducing a new form to an established
terminology was bad enough, and making that three is worse.