Japanese translation

[carlj7]

I'll defer to Daisuke on this one. Just to let you know, I have made a few more minor modifications to the file - corrections - so if you are going to put my one into the tree, best to download it again.

http://giantblt.co.uk/res/Localizable.strings

I was looking at that file and the first half of it looked right in Safari and the rest was unencoded-- is the whole file using the same encoding scheme? Does it matter?

edit: to answer my own question, if you manually set it to utf-8, the whole file encodes right, so it's fine. I think Safari was decoding it as JIS or something…

[zaudragon]

By the way, be consistent in http://giantblt.co.uk/res/Localizable.strings:

始めた
戻ってきました

Make it all formal or informal!

か月 should be:
ヶ月

[dokada]

I'll defer to Daisuke on this one. Just to let you know, I have made a few more minor modifications to the file - corrections - so if you are going to put my one into the tree, best to download it again.

Here is my suggestion. Since it is pretty much done, we include ickoonite's version in the tree now. We can edit it to whatever we feel comfortable with. If possible maybe we can set up a webpage or forum topic of some sort to get the Japanese users' response.

???
???????

Make it all formal or informal!

This is mostly true and is important. However, there are places where you want to use formal expressions (like notifications, etc. as above) and other places you want to use informal ones (such as "go away" or alike). Again this needs to be consistant as zaudragon has expressed. I still have not had time to look fully at ickoonite's strings so I am not sure how many of these instances exist. I will check it asap.

>Evan
Don't worry about marging the two localized versions. I will come up with something to compare the two. Thanks for your effort though. Just as always, I highly appreciate your help. Maybe we should chat sometime soon. I have a couple of questions I need to ask.

[carlj7]

か月 should be:
ヶ月

As long as it's not 〜ヵ月. I'm happy. I've seen ヵ月 in various Japanese localizations, and it irks me to no end. It's like nails on the chalkboard …or nattou in your bentou. It's just uncool.

[zaudragon]

?? should be:
??

As long as it's not ???. I'm happy. I've seen ?? in various Japanese localizations, and it irks me to no end. It's like nails on the chalkboard …or nattou in your bentou. It's just uncool.

lol I was just reading Astro Boy (in Japanese of course) and it irked me as well

[dokada]

It's like nails on the chalkboard …or nattou in your bentou. It's just uncool.

While I agree whole heartedly on the former, I am not sure on the latter..., though natto in your lunch box would not be so good either

[ickoonite]

Make it all formal or informal!

Yeah, I know. Cheers, though. I did say earlier on that there were bits that would make you go "Argh." I was aware that there were issues like that and I was working through to resolve them. As dokada says, there are times when we want formal and times when we want informal, and there may have been some logic to what I was doing at some point, alas now long since lost.

Anyway, where appropriate, everything in there should now be in formal speech, so there is yet another updated version (as of 11am GMT) with zaudragon and carlj7's edits as suggested. I must say - I agree totally on the 一ヶ月 thing, although I went for the か because I couldn't for the life of me recall ever having seen the former in a translation. But that's just me.

Incidentally, what's your guys' view on 一ケ月? Or 一箇月? 一個月? I used to study in 四ツ谷 (or 四谷, or 四ッ谷, or 四つや...笑) so I am familiar with these issues.

(I would have liked to get back to you guys sooner on this, but I'm editing the strings file on my Mac before copying it to a Windows laptop to upload it - for Internet access reasons - and it's all a bit painful. )

[macyu]

Hi, I just found out about the beta and the Japanese translation recently, but great work so far! What has amazed me was the amount done by non-native Japanese, so mad props to you guys. I seemed to have missed the bulk of the work, but since I noticed some stuff in the Localizable.strings file ickoonite posted, I'll send in corrections I found:

"Alias" = "アリアス";
should be エイリアス to be with compatible with the standard katakana translation of alias

"Arrows" = "アロー";
could be 矢印（やじるし）for normal arrow, but I assume that in this case, directional arrow keys on the keyboard should be refered to as 方向キー

"Clear completed transfers automatically" = "転送が完成したファイルを自動的に消去";
I think this makes it sound like we're automatically deleting files that finished transfering, so probably a better phrasing would be: 完了したファイル転送の記録を自動的に消去

"Client" = "クライエント";
client is usually refered to as クライアント

"You are editing a default event set. Please enter a unique name for your modified set." = "既定のエベントセットを編集しています。変更したセットに唯一の名前を入力して下さい。";
just the event (エベント) which should be イベント

I'm sorry if I suddently butted in, but since I do want to have it in Japanese for myself and my friends (I'm Japanese studying abroad), I thought I'd try to help. I'll do some more checking and translating once I get some work out of my way.

Yu

[Newtylicious]

Heh. You all completely surpass me with Japanese. The again, I haven't even completed Japanese 1

The Japanese localization could be fun to play with. It'd force me to learn those words.

About the extent of my Japanese knowledge: Boku wa Adium ga dai suki desu. I didn't feel like downloading one of those browsers to get the Hiragana/Kanji to work..

[carlj7]

I seemed to have missed the bulk of the work, but since I noticed some stuff in the Localizable.strings file ickoonite posted, I'll send in corrections I found:

Heh, it's funny, those things were totally mistakes that only a non-native Japanese speaker would make. My job consists mostly of seeing the reverse of that-- confusion about articles, pluralization problems, misusing "could," not using "would," etc.-- so it's funny to see native English speakers being the ones looking foolish in a foreign language, instead of the other way around. Everyone makes mistakes of course. We make fun of "Engrish" t-shirts and signs; they make fun of poorly chosen kanji tatoos. It's all good. Everybody has to make mistakes to learn; it's the only way to do it.

[dokada]

>macyu
Thanks for your suggestions and corrections. Currently we are pulling ickoonite's localization out of the source and putting mine in for organization sake. We were having some difficulties updating the localization files for Japanese recently so it may not have happened yet (at least I haven't seen it integrated yet) but as soon as Evan figures this out, we will move forward with that.

I have already changed some of the lines you have pointed out, but I am sure that we have quite a bit more of unclear/unorthodox translations so any suggestions and improvements are welcomed. I really appreciate your input.

To be honest, I am quite surprised that this topic has such high interest on the board. I am glad to see you all trying to help out and I thank you all for that. If you get around to the source (with new Japanese localization), most of the strings are done except ones I have not felt comfortable with the translations I come up with. If you see those lines and have good suggestions, please let me know. You can AIM me or leave a comment here.

I might have already stated here (I have been quite forgetful in my old age), we want to make Adium localization to be as good as Adium itself. Adium is a wonderful application and it provides great user experience. Our translation aims for the same user experience in Japanese. For that your input is quite valuable.

[ickoonite]

to macyu
Thanks for your corrections, but as you note, I have been superceded anyway!

to dokada

>We were having some difficulties updating the localization files for Japanese recently so it may not have happened yet (at least I haven't seen it integrated yet)...

It's in SVN, but I suppose it hasn't made it to a proper beta build yet - I'm building from source so I've been using it for the past few days .

I had few minor queries actually, and seeing as this thread still seems alive, i'll add them here...

• Is ログ and ログビューワー really better than 履歴?
  
  ウィンドウ should be ウインドウ on the Mac, inexplicable as it may be.
  
  I wondered what you thought of my efforts in the Events pane. To my mind, it makes more sense to use 〜際 (or 〜とき), so that you get something like 「メッセージュを送信する際に..."Message Sent"のサウンドを鳴らす。」(In fact, the listing needs some sorting out, but that will be a problem in all languages with different word order.)
  
  The Growl status messages need particles.

[dokada]

> ickoonite
Glad to hear you have the access to the file now. The issue on the ウィンドウwas completely my oversight. I knew that all of it was supposed to be ウインドウ but I somehow messed up on that consistently. Thanks for pointing that out.

On the issue of "Log," I am split in the middle on using ログ or 履歴. I like it either way. Only preference for using ログ is the fact I use that word with friends and it has been the natural word of choice. For Browsers, it is 履歴を見る but for IM it has always been ログを見る in my mind. Using 履歴 does make sense as well, so we can change to that if we want. I wonder what other IM clients (official and non official) have for that.

Events pane was indeed a pain. I still like the original localization philosophy of Adium which was something like "you change the localizable.strings and don't touch the nib files inorder to keep the maintenance minimal." So I was respecting the space alotted for the English nib files and trying to make the localization fit (am I making sense?). Anyhow, that approach may be changing and we are encouraged to change the nib files if it makes a better translation. So list those strings up and we can work on that. Less confusion is alwasy better.

And for the word "idle" I put in 待機中 (this is the word choice for Proteus). What do you think about that? I am not completely sold on that one, but it is better than アイドル which make nearly all Japanese think something other than what Adium intends it to mean.

I used macyu's "Arrows" and "Clear completed transfers automatically" strings. These correction should be in the source soon.

Keep your input coming 8)

[ickoonite]

Speaking frankly, I prefer 履歴。:D That said, I also have a feeling my Japanese friend didn't know what ログ was. And as to other clients, Mac MSN and Yahoo! JAPAN Messenger both use 履歴 - I am not sure what others do. In any event, with the above in mind, I would incline towards 履歴 over ログ。

As to minimal maintenance, as I have not used the translation programme successfully, I don't really know what it looks like and am not entirely able to appreciate the need to make things fit. When I did my version of the events pane, things simply wrapped - there was no obviously detrimental effect on the appearance of that panel.

To my mind, it makes more sense to edit the NIBs, if only just to make things Really Good. Plus, the resizing thing doesn't seem to work all the time anyway (see, for example, the アドレスブック bit in the アドバンス pane - the
る of 置き換える is cut off). Whilst it is likely that things will change somewhat before 1.0, it shouldn't be tremendously problematic, and I should think that interface elements should start to settle down soon anyway.

And for the word "idle" I put in 待機中 (this is the word choice for Proteus). What do you think about that? I am not completely sold on that one, but it is better than アイドル which make nearly all Japanese think something other than what Adium intends it to mean.

Agreed that アイドル is hopeless, but I'm not sure about 待機, and I would say simply that Proteus is wrong on this. Correct me if I am wrong, but does 待機 not imply waiting for something - standby, awaiting orders, etc? The "Idle" state - and again, here is where the difference between "Away" and "Idle" becomes hard to discern - is triggered normally when one has been 不在 for a certain period of time, but I believe it to be considered more temporary than the more definitive "Away" state. As such, it has just occured to me that 一時不在 might be a really good idea.

Perhaps we can ask the forum how they define "Away" and "Idle," but I wonder if 一時不在 might be the answer.

[carlj7]

アドバンス pane

Shouldn't that be the 詳細 pane? Pretty much every Mac application uses 詳細 for advanced options.

As to 履歴 v. ログ, I suppose more kanji is always better. If foreigners don't fight the influx of 外来語 who will?

[evands]

Away indicates a choice made, while Idle indicates the computer detecting that you are no longer doing anything and reporting that fact to others. The first is active while the second is passive. Does that distinction help at all?

[carlj7]

Ironically, there's a localization error in the Japanese localization. An ellipse got turned into a small 'no':

Also, my vote to replace アイドル is either 不活発, 非活動, or キムタク.

[ickoonite]

Shouldn't that be the 詳細 pane? Pretty much every Mac application uses 詳細 for advanced options.

I agree with you on that one - I was merely quoting what dokada has translated it as. That said, I am sure I have seen アドバンス before.

Ironically, there's a localization error in the Japanese localization. An ellipse got turned into a small 'no'.

I've been meaning to raise this issue for a while. It happens in a lot of Mac OS X localisations. The problem is that the Mac has a character, presumably within the ASCII set, for "...". When the system locale is set to a Western encoding, this comes up fine. But if you switch to, say, the Japanese encoding, that character is instead a half-width katakana ノ. If there is specific code in Adium which appends the "...", it really needs to append three full stops, rather than the special all-in-one symbol, for compatibility's sake. It may well be that other non-Roman localisations will be similarly affected.

Alternatively, it may just be an oversight in the Localisations source file itself, simply requiring a replacement of what looks like three full stops with three actual full stops. Or should I say periods?

Also, my vote to replace アイドル is either 不活発, 非活動, or キムタク.

非活動 seems to make most sense.

[dokada]

AHHH, I could not believe I had "adobansu" for Advanced pane. That is a simple oversight on my part. Most of the localization are done through localizable.strings so I had translated some lines without what it actually referring to. I saw another one just today and fixed it as well. It is now appropriately called "shousai" on my Adium

I have been aware of "..." changing to "no" as pointed above. I have already fixed that one for the update (or so I think because on my strings, there is no "..." after that line).

As for the "Idle," while inactivity of "Idle" fits best with "hikatsudou" I am not sure that is a good expression to use. "Konpyu-ta-wo tsukatte imasen" or alike would be the line to use if we could use a sentence (which in noun form indeed is "hikatsudou." People here use "aidoringu" (katakana) which refers to idling of an automobile (i.e. running engine while stopping for a while). We may use this expression here. Just a though.

[macyu]

Also, my vote to replace アイドル is either 不活発, 非活動, or キムタク.

Heh good one Despite the semantics of 待機中 to mean 'standing-by', I think it's better than 不活発 or 非活動. Those seem clumsy to me. On the other hand, if we want to go real wordy, I guess we could do the 一時退席中 that I think was used in MSN.

...but then again, we could also just go with ジャニーズ or ハロプロ instead of アイドル… ok I shut up