Subject: Re: Pronouns in the GNOME translation

From: [email-masked]
Date: Sun, 09 Sep 2001 23:35:20 -0000

--- In lojban@y..., Rob Speer <rob@t...> wrote:
> As I get farther into the GNOME translation, I'm faced with doubts 
about which
> pronouns to use in messages. There are five different situations 
that come into
> effect:
> 
> These cases come from the user choosing items in a menu or a 
dialog box:
> 1. The user telling the computer to perform an action (I use ko)
> 2. The user choosing a setting for what the computer should do, 
but not
> immediately (I use zo'e; "Show tasklist arrow" is "selctagau 
tu'a le samru'e
> bo liste jesni" ["the tasklist arrow is shown"]).
> 3. The user telling the computer what he intends to do ("Browse" = 
"mi sisku")
> 4. The computer telling the user to perform an action (ko)
> 5. The computer telling the user what it is doing (So far, I've 
been using
> strategically-placed "goi ko'a" the first time the program 
refers to itself
> when I have to deal with this)
> 
> The cases I'm most uncomfortable with are 2 (things which sound 
like they
> should be commands get phrased without "ko"), 4 (what if it's not 
clear which
> "ko" it is?) and 5 (I'd like a consistent way to refer to whatever 
program is
> being interacted with, but 'mi' sounds wrong and would create 
confusion with
> 3).
> 
> I think what I need are some other pronouns which I can use 
consistently.
> Perhaps 2 would be done with something like "skami bu"?
> 
> Any suggestions?

I'm going to deliberately answer without reading too carefully. I 
know that's dangerous (thinking is almost always better than 
not-thinking). But my gut reaction is that verbs in computer menus 
are probably just about always best as {zo'e}. I mean, the problem 
you're having is that the English pronounless sentence is waffling 
between commands and indicative sentences of what the user plans on 
doing, what the computer is doing, etc. {zo'e}'s great for that: 
it's whatever you intending, and you're counting on the user to work 
out who... and chances are it will work out, if you think about it. 
There aren't many choices out there for the meaning that you can 
seriously expect the user to entertain.

So my knee-jerk reaction is: computer menus get written in 
observatives.

~mark