Guides updates considerations for translators

Hi Team

Many LibreOffice guides are source for translation in several languages. The work on translation can be alleviated by computer assisted translation tools (CAT) as well as using machine translation MT for the job.

Nevertheless, the translation job is still exhausting, as most of the time, there is need to review the results of the tools, and update the images, when necessary. From one release to the following, almost all contents is the same. When there is a high matching index, the CAT tool will accept the existing contents.

So here is the demand: Authors should make minimal changes in the existing English contents, except for fixing bad or confusing English text.

This is subjective, of course.

But Authors needs to consider that there will be a significant workload downstream in translations. In many cases, changes in English may have already been corrected in the target language at translator discretion.

New LibreOffice features are out of this demand, as they must be documented anyway.

Cheers

Olivier

Hello Olivier

There is a definite need to improve the standard of English used in some of the documents.

After producing user guides that have been translated into every European language, including Hebrew and Arabic, I can understand your comments about translation. This is why I write user guides the way I do. Avoiding personal words like you, yours, mine, we and so on should never be used. Word contractions, unless it is a name of some item, should not be used (for example can’t (cannot), don’t (do not)).

As an example, one problem I have come across is the use of ITS and IT’S. ITS is a possessive word, for example its box. IT’S is a contraction for it is. I have met English people who get these two words confused. Therefore ITS and IT’S should be avoided completely in LibreOffice user guides.

Your comment suggesting that authors make minimal changes could not be used for Writer Guide Chapter 16 Master Documents. This chapter was very poorly written and confusing. Also, after looking at Writer Guide Chapter 15 TOCs, Indexes and Bibliographies for information, I have come to the conclusion that this chapter should be rewritten to make it more understandable.

Hope my comments help.

Regards
PeeWee

2 Likes

any example ? :thinking:

which one may not be avoided? :thinking: :thinking:

Hello Pierre

Do not understand your email. Could you please explaing.

Regards
PeeWee