[Foundation-l] Translations fundraising.wikimedia.org

Thu Dec 21 20:55:41 UTC 2006

[reorganising thread for readability]

On 12/21/06, Aphaia <aphaia at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 12/22/06, Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > But...
> >
> > when it's only one-word phrases (such as "fundraising", "navigation"),
> > that is quite possible to do with a dictionary.
>
> Never, since in some languages there is *no* sole counterpart. For
> example, fundraising is just such a word in Japanese. There is no
> custom in Japanese society so you need to know how it functions in a
> society to find an appropriate expression and concise enough fit to
> the sitenotice, for example.

Well, from my experience with translating to and from Latin, Greek,
French and German, a good dictionary will contain notes on usage that
should suffice here.

For example, say I am looking to translate the word "head" in the
sense of a flowerhead.  My French dictionary would immediately point
me to "tête", but a close reading would point me to "pointe" as being
correct.  For fundraising, it suggests "collecte de fonds" or
"collecte d'argent", the latter of which is used on the site.[1]

I am perfectly happy to concede that a dictionary does not wholly
suffice for most things.  But sometimes, for simple interface
questions and especially those that are not specific to the Internet,
a dictionary can suffice.

[1] My Latin and Greek dictionaries do not include the term, curiously... :-)

-- 
Sam