Irregularity in text source
Hi,
When translation MuseScore I have wondering about how to translate the irregularities in the source concerning capital letter in the beginning of a word (or sentence). There are a lot of irregularities in this field. I my opinion words without a capital letter in the beginning gives the impression that something is unprofessional and unfinished. I think that we should deside wherther to use capital letters in the beginning of words or not, and when to use it. Now it's just a mess...
As I said, I prefere capital letters in the beginning of words and sentences. It gives the impression of a more professional and worked-through product.
Regards,
Dag Henning
Comments
Hello Dag Henning!
Yes, this should be sorted out. Would you like to give a few examples for discussion?
I have just written a suggestion for the original strings in clefTable to look like this:
"Treble clef"
"Treble clef 8va"
"Treble clef 15ma"
"Treble clef 8vb"
"Bass clef"
"Bass clef 8vb"
"Bass clef 15mb"
"Baritone clef"
"Subbass clef"
"Soprano clef"
"Mezzo-soprano clef"
"Alto clef"
"Tenor clef"
"Baritone clef"
"Tablature"
"Percussion"
"French violin clef"
instead of the current:
"Treble Clef (G Clef)"
"Treble Clef 8va"
"Treble Clef 15ma"
"Treble Clef 8va bassa"
"Bass Clef (F Clef)"
"Bass Clef 8va bassa"
"Bass Clef 15mb bassa"
"Baritone Clef"
"Subbass Clef"
"Soprano Clef"
"Mezzo-soprano Clef"
"Alto Clef"
"Tenor Clef"
"Tablature"
"Percussion"
"French Violin Clef"
Regards,
Magnus
Here is a list of some examples:
Hide Empty Staves
staff upper border
Minumum width of measure:
staff distance
staff lower border
Just a small example. There are a lot of these issues. Also in the list of symboles the names are all written without captal letter in the beginning of the name. Why?
There is also the issue about when to use colon. This is not used in the same matter through the source.
Yes, these are tiny details, but the text is almost the first impression the user gets of the program, so it should be well written.
In reply to Here is a list of some by Soerboe
I agree with you that the style of strings is very important. But I think that the style is maybe decided by the context; if e.g. the string is in a mouse pointer label, in a menu item, or in the title of a dialog window. A lot of mouse pointer labels don't use capital letters at all, and perhaps that is OK, but I have also noticed some otherwise bad examples among them: In the dialog window "MuseScore: Symbols" the mouse pointer label for the letter e from the mark Ped has the label "pedale". A revision of the original strings is necessary, not only becuase of their style but because of their content.
I did some work on capitalization between version 0.9.2, 0.9.3 and 0.9.4. Previously the menu items used an inconsistent capitalization. I standardized on title case for the menu items since that is what everyone else uses and is recommended by Apple, Microsoft, and others. Tooltips should use sentence case (capital letter for first word) although I haven't got to these yet.
I only make these changes at the beginning of each development cycle since even small changes to the English strings cause regressions in every other language. We are no longer in the beginning stages of the development cycle so I will wait till after the next version of MuseScore before making changes. I agree this needs to be fixed.
In reply to I did some work on by David Bolton
David! What about section and box names in dialog windows, should they have title case like in the attached MuseScore window or sentence case like in the Sibelius window?
In reply to I did some work on by David Bolton
Right with you David,
As you know, most translators keep tracks of modifications of the interface and verify the consistency of their translations in each prerelease and post modifications, or bug report in the issue tracker, as soon as possible for integration in the next prerelease.
If a more in depht modification is required, I suggest you post on the forum and/or by e-mail to the translators team we find at http://www.musescore.org/en/node/843 that an extensive care should be done. As translators have a real knowledge of their mother tongue, they are the right people to implement specific language idiomatics.