Antville Project

a little bit of linguistic quibbling

When contributing e.g. a comment to a German-language antville-blog, the following confirmation message is returned: "der Kommentar wurde erfolgreich gespeichert". Same thing in English: "the story was created succesfully". Since I don't think that there is such a thing as unsuccessful saving or creation of stories ("der Kommentar wurde erfolglos gespeichert", "the story was created without success"), the adverb "erfolgreich"/"successful" is redundant, and, if you don't mind me saying this, actually also sounds a bit silly. It's not at all a big issue, but perhaps a correction could be made to these confirmation messages in future releases - just for the linguistically picky :-)

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hermannluehrs, September 16, 2002 at 11:18:56 PM CEST

Re: a little bit of linguistic quibbling

Feel free to make some proposals!

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katatonik, September 18, 2002 at 2:45:47 AM CEST

Well, the comment-post-link is usually introduced with "place your comment". It seems logical to use the verb "place" also in the success message: "Your comment was placed", though this does sound a bit unusual. As for the tense (I guess the question is whether to use past or present perfect), I'm uncertain. "Your comment was placed" sounds better to me than "your comment has been placed", but "your comment has been saved" better than "your comment was saved" ("why, was it in danger?" - oh, well). Perhaps this could be circumvented by choosing really short and neutral messages like "comment placed"/"comment saved" - "story created" - "image saved" - "goodie saved", and so on. This could also solve the "Du"/"Sie"-problem in German - "Kommentar gespeichert" is enough information, isn't it? I don't really like it when interfaces address me, anyway :-)

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hns, September 17, 2002 at 11:16:20 AM CEST

Thanks

I agree with you on those messages. What do you propose?

"Dein Kommentar wurde gespeichert."

"Your comment has been saved."

Not sure about the tense in the English version. Is "saved" the best word for the procedure?

Generally, antville is full of improvable wording, just like it is full of improvable code. Comments and proposals on both are always welcome. In fact, we depend on them.

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seewolf, September 17, 2002 at 11:35:52 AM CEST

Das "Du"

auch wenn ich da wie ein Oldtimer klinge, aber ist es bei Antvilles Griff nach der Weltherrschaft nicht besser, nicht zu locker daherzukommen? Ich hab damit kein Problem bei antville.org, aber nun hab ich ein Elternratforum mit antville am laufen, und da ist es schon ein bissl komisch. Bei der dänischen Übersetzung, an der ich immer noch rumkämpfe (muß es doch von Muttersprachlern gegenlesen lassen), ist es wieder korrekt, dort sagt man höchstens zur Konigin "Sie".

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hermannluehrs, September 17, 2002 at 11:58:04 AM CEST

Re: Du

ich stimme mit seewolf überein. "Du" passt nicht immer und ist manchmal sogar kontraproduktiv. Oft helfen passivische Formen weiter, weil sie weder "Du" noch "Sie" nötig machen. Ich mach mir ein paar Gedanken dafür auf der translate-antiville-seite.

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hermannluehrs, September 17, 2002 at 12:01:59 PM CEST

topic, story, comment, reply

Ich habe Vorschläge hierzu auf der translate-antville-seite gemacht

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tobi, September 17, 2002 at 12:16:22 PM CEST

passiv

passivformen solltest du in technischen anleitungen (dazu gehören auch online hilfen) allerdings möglichst vermeiden...

just found: Die wichtigsten Schritte in einem GUI-Übersetzungsprozess.

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