Subject: Re: RFC: German translation vocabulary

From: Christian Stimming <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 17 Sep 2007 21:45:26 +0200

Thanks for the replies so far. I'll summarize the proposals below, and I'll 
take the freedom to reply to them directly.  (Note: Please CC: me on replies 
as I'm not subscribed to this list - too much traffic for me.)

One thing to keep in mind (one reader proposed to use "commit" 
and "repository" in untranslated form): This translation is really about 
translating the program, and the intended audience are those people who are 
*not* familiar with the English git terminology. Hence, I really really want 
to try hard to avoid untranslated terminology here. German really has enough 
words to choose from (just like every other language), so that it should be 
possible to avoid using untranslated English words just because we couldn't 
come up with German ones that fir.

> repository - Projektarchiv

Simon Richter thinks just "Archiv" would be fine as well in most places. 
Florian Weimar says "Projekt" or "Archiv" should suffice. David Kastrup 
agrees to this.

I think "Archiv" sounds quite unspecific, because it can be another room, or 
another harddisk, or another directory. Whereas a git repository is 
particular to this single git project. Also, when reading through the 
TortoiseSVN docs, "Projektarchiv" worked quite nicely. I'd still stick to 
this.

> revision - Version

Florian Weimar proposes "Versionsangabe". He thinks "revision" is most used as 
a short form of "revision specifier".

I think in sentences like "let's switch the working copy from revision xyz to 
revision abc" the word "Version" would work much better than any longer form. 
I'd stick to this, especially since this proposal came here from the mailing 
list already :-)

> staging area - Bereitstellung

Simon Richter remarks this German word is being used a translation 
for "deployment", i.e. making binaries available to end users (however, this 
is probably specific to some particular development environment, isn't it?). 
He thinks "Vorbereitung" would be better here. Florian Weimar 
proposes "Index".

I think the word should have a connotation of "another place which is 
separated from the working copy". The military term "Bereitstellung" IMHO 
gives this rather nicely. I haven't seen that term in the ambiguous meaning 
Simon pointed out; is this a problem? As for "Index": As mentioned above it 
should be possible to find a German word here. 

> branch [noun] - Zweig

No comments to this one; it seems to be just fine.

> branch  [verb] - verzweigen

Florian Weimar mentiones "abzweigen", if it's used transitive.

In itself "abzweigen" is a nice word, but "verzweigen" gives more of the 
(desired) connotation of a tree's branches (uh oh! Linas will beat me for 
this! Of course this isn't a tree, it's a graph!) and hence for consistency I 
would stick to "verzweigen".

> working copy, working tree - Arbeitskopie

No comments to this one (or did I miss anyone); it seems to be just fine.

> [commit] message - Meldung (Nachricht?; Source Safe: Kommentar)

David Soria first preferred "Kommentar". David Kastrup 
proposes "Beschreibung", or later instead "Zusammenfassung", which then David 
Soria thinks is the best so far.

I think "Zusammenfassung" would rather describe what the diffstat is about, as 
this summarizes the actual commit. As we're naming "the short text that 
describes what this is about", I think actually "Beschreibung" is probably 
best so far.

> msgid "checkout [noun]"
> msgstr "Auscheck? Ausspielung? Abruf? (Source Safe: Auscheckvorgang)"
>
> msgid "checkout [verb]"
> msgstr "auschecken? ausspielen? abrufen? (Source Safe: auschecken)"

Simon Richter proposed the long translation "Erstellung einer Arbeitskopie" 
(gets less awkward when you make proper sentences from it). Florian Weimar 
asks how's a checkout different from a working copy? But he wouldn't 
translate "repository" and "commit", at least if they are used as nouns.

I agree with Simon Richter here, just as I've already explained in my initial 
email: The noun should probably simply be the working copy, "Arbeitskopie", 
and the verb should be something with "Arbeitskopie erstellen". However, we 
have strings like "Checkout this branch...", and those need yet another word. 
Maybe "Arbeitskopie umstellen"? I'm still unsure.

> msgid "commit [noun]"
> msgstr "Übertragung (Sendung?, Übergabe?, Einspielung?, Ablagevorgang?)"

Alexander Wuerstlein proposed "Vorgang" (think governmental German). Florian 
Weimar proposes "Sammlung" and "sammeln", to which David Kastrup replied it 
doesn't fit because "sammeln" is what you do _before_ committing. In addition 
David Kastrup proposes Buchung, Einbuchung, Verbuchung, Registrierung. 
Alexander Wuerstlein proposes "Transaktion", to which David replied he 
thinks "Transaktion" is anything with a permanent effect, so he finds this 
term too unspecific: it would equally well cover resetting, tagging, and a 
number of other things. (Also, it wouldn't work as a verb.)

I think we should try to replace this (the noun!) with "revision" and hence 
translate it as "Version". However, this needs to be checked in actual 
strings in the program.

> msgid "commit [verb]"
> msgstr "übertragen (TortoiseSVN: übertragen; Source Safe: einchecken;
> senden?, übergeben?, einspielen?, einpflegen?, ablegen?)"

David Soria prefers "Einspielung" as he think it reflects better, that the
commit is locally. Simon Richter proposes "einspielen"? Problem is that this 
cannot be properly turned into a noun.

This verb appears on the one-word button "commit", which is obviously the most 
important button in git-gui. I think both "einspielen" and "übertragen" would 
work in that context, but David Kastrup's proposals of "buchen" 
or "verbuchen" and the others of "einpflegen", "ablegen" might also work. Yet 
more proposals, or other hints which one of these would work best?

Thanks for all the suggestions. This should be thought about for a few more 
days, and then I'll prepare an updated German glossary file to be committed 
to the repository.

Regards,

Christian