On 14 Jul 2001, ZZzz.. wrote:

applet: now translated as "小程式" in many GNOME applications, I think it is ambigious for the meaning of small program, My suggestion is "面板程式" or "面板物件" or "面板嵌入物件"...or just leave alone without translation...Any other suggestions?

Personally, I am those among those damned beast who use "小程式"..... but I was unable to come up with a creative translation which works better. Ummm... for me, I'd pick "面板程式", since "面板物件" or "面板嵌入物件" are too generalized and can contain different meaning; for example, those drawers, main menu or even left/right arrows can be considered as panel object too.

Load: Translated as "讀取" in some application. "載入" is suggested.

Yeah, I support it too, if it's not under any exceptional case. Actually *load* something and *read* something are almost doing the same thing.

Launcher: "發射器"...I don't know

*sigh* This is a direct lookup in dictionary without thinking, as in "rocket launcher". I've used "啟動圖示" for some time, but not sure if it's good enough.

input focus: "輸入注視" in sawfish. "輸入焦點" should be more proper.

Also support this. Actually even the direct translation is "輸入焦點".

OK: now "好" in many application. I think "確定" from the WinXX is a good.

Not only the OK button, but those "Accept", "Cancel", "Add", "Remove" etc buttons which affect a lot of programs need to have some unification too. But different people may have different taste, how can all of us get a concensus here?

I think the unification of translation is an important affair. Sometimes I would go back to the english locale to see the original text to understanding the real meaning. It might be annoying.

Sometimes even the english locale is not enough, and you need to dig into source code in order to get the *intention* of words. But don't think it's very annoying -- it makes me learn so much unrelated knowledge ^_^

OK, back to topic. It's true that no such unification exists, because everybody is working independently without input/suggestion from others. For those vocabulary, is anybody working on such kind of collection of vocab or search engine?

I've tried from various sources including online dictionary, other software (some even from windows or solaris) and previous translations from other people. However all these sources are absolutely not enough (online dict in particular), so we need some effort on collecting various vocab and build a database out of them.

However there are other technical difficulties -- people subscribe into this list are not only from taiwan. I think part of them are from mainland china and hong kong. However different places use different dialects, and one person's use of vocab and translations may affect others. For example, I'm from Hong Kong, and my translation may contain some dialects unknown by a portion of people here. Actually there is a thought about spliting effort to create zh_HK out of zh_TW (and I'm one of the translators discussing it), but not sure if it's worthy or not. Anyway, what I want to point out is, better indicate it's for taiwan only, or include other use of vocab from other places speaking chinese.

Anybody else has opinion about this?

Regards, Abel