2009-01-13

It's a noun, not an adjective...

I had been teaching translation a few years back, but these days it's mostly interpreting. (I'm an interpreter, after all...) There has however been a kind of translation course that I always wanted to teach, but never had a chance to, until now: software localisation, "l10n".

L10n is very different from regular translation courses because what students translate is not just meant for their teacher to see and then throw away after he decided on a grade, here the translation actually gets used by people - and students learn how to actually apply (a term very popular and mostly equally meaningless at foreign language departments in Taiwan) the language they learned.

That I have this course now is more an accident, and currently I'm also not quite happy with it. The better students ("good" and "bad" are relative terms, right?) have long done their share this semester, the not-so-interested students are through too and what I am left with the last few days are those students who did not care at all and now suddenly woke up and noticed they might need to do something if they want to pass the semester.

I have not been teaching "normal" translation courses recently, so I also did not teach these students - but I assume that they must have had some translation classes since they are fourth year now. This is something I need to rely on, because in this course there are plenty of other things to learn, so there is no time for translation basics.

I doubt that you ever had to do with "Pootle". It is a server software to create a l10n site. It is technically not always easy to handle and took me a long time to get it running in an ISPConfig user account, but on the language front it is very nice indeed: You can permit all kinds of actions to translators, for example just let them make suggestions (what I do now), so a senior translator or editor (or teacher) can pick the best one - and still evaluate all others.

In this mode, there may be a few suggestions lined up under a source language term/phrase. Everyone can see previous suggestions, so it is not necessary (especially if your teacher told you so) to write again what someone else wrote already. But still I get four or more times the same "translation" suggested...

Pootle comes with a glossary and will itself make suggestions based on that in a separate field, and if that suggestions is suitable you can copy it with just one click. You can even create translation memory, so work gets easier the longer you use Pootle to do translations. Unfortunately, that help seems now misunderstood as the one and only correct translation. The glossary for example will suggest a term and its translation if the term is part of a word/phrase in the source language field.

So I have "credits" (we are translating a few open source games now), not the monetary kind, I speak of mentioning the people who contributed. The word "edit" is contained in "credits", so the glossary (filled mostly with computer-related terms) suggests "edit 編輯". And 4.5 out of seven students write right that as suggestion. (The half one wrote 編輯者) The four who wrote 編輯 did so consecutively one after the other...

Or let's take "difficulty". (still doing games) The suggestions: four 困難, one 困難的, one 困境 and one even "Difficulty". Gettext PO files allow translator comments and Pootle supports this feature, so I used it for a hint: "This is a noun, not an adjective." Nobody noticed.

And for such gems I am supposed (at least those students expect it) to issue a score. Don't ask me what I get if there are longer or multiple sentences, not just single words...

When I said my quarters were cold,...

...I did not mean, 'Oh, I think it's a little chilly in here, perhaps I'll throw a blanket on the bed.' No, I said it was COLD, as in, 'Oh, my left arm has snapped off like an icicle and shattered on the floor'! This is highly inappropriate, Captain!

Ambassador Londo Mollari in Babylon5: The Illusion of Truth

Our six degrees plus wind the last few days here on Taiwan may not be as low as the -20 or less in Europe, but here, the inside temperature is about the same as the one outside.

Something I can not quite comprehend even after a few years here: The cold time may be significantly shorter than the hot time of the year, but it is there. So why is it impossible to produce windows and doors that do not let the wind blow through? Why is it impossible to thermally insulate a house, so that it would make sense to use a heater?

Yes, on average, the river was only one metre deep, most of it was very shallow indeed. But the cow still drowned when it tried to cross...

2009-01-09

玩HTML、 CSS、 XHTML

我平常不太喜歡“玩”這個動詞,我認為台灣人把它用較多。像我用電錶的時候:
“我也要玩!”
“這不是玩具……”

或用烙鐵的時候:
“很有趣,我可不可以也玩一下?“
”者不是玩具……“
等等等……

但是這此真的可以”玩“。而且,還可以學到一些東西,例如正確的HTML,而不是Frontpage或更恐怖Word(真的有人用Word做出HTML頁!你有沒有看過那個原碼?Grrrrrr...)輸出的垃圾。

有一個不錯的網站,HTML Playground,讓你玩各種各樣的tag等。你可以調整一些數值,然後在一個視窗內看到結果。你不用先建一個web server,不用先寫一個HTML頁,甚至不用安裝任何特殊的軟體:只要用你的瀏藍器(Safari好像還有問題)就可以。

也不用擔心,你不會破壞什麼,所以可以慢慢研究……

PS: Aaaaaarrrrggghhh,原來忘記插入鏈接,現在好了。

2009-01-06

你要便宜,你拿到貴

你應該有發現很多公司,甚至政府在外包各種各樣的項目。例如美軍如果沒有許多公司的支援,根本沒有辦法動。也許你也有發現一些公司或國家機構做的事情可能有一些矛盾。

目前很多國家的政府很高興地利用“恐怖分子”讓他們國民害怕,這樣也讓他們接受任何那些政治家平常沒有辦法得到的法律。因為恐怖分子對我們造成那麼大的危險,我們必須接受國家減少我們的權利,我們必須接受國家觀察我們,控制我們,收集資料等。

像一些國家現在導入新的護照跟身份證,包含RFID晶片等。政府會說那是為了安全,不過… 如果他們那麼在乎安全,為什麼他們會把護照的部分的制造移到泰國(美國)或把原來國營的聯邦印刷公司賣給國外的民營公司(德國)?

但是我要談到重點:為了節省成本,很多組織會把敏感的部分交給不在他們控制下的公司。你應該有看過收銀台的刷卡終端機。不可以買太貴,所以我們買Made in China的。都為了成本…

德國的超市最近對這個東西有一點敏感。有一天晚上,一個警衛經過收銀台附近的時候發現他對講機裡面有雜訊,好像附近有訊號。不過,已經關店了,他之外沒有人。還好他跟他同事比較周到:他們檢查訊號從哪裡來,終於發現中國制的便宜終端機果然有加價:終端機裡面回路被改過,而且有裝GSM模組。

每天白天,終端機會記錄某一些卡片的資料,晚上把那些資料寄到中國。終端機離開廠商的時候,回路已經被改過,不是一個人辛苦地手動焊接… 而且,至少五個歐洲國家的超市在用那一家的終端機。所以,也許下次要好一點考慮要外包哪一些項目…