Mastodawn

i have a question for speakers of different languages regarding how the software you are using expresses the concept of "an action is currently happening" (examples in english: "Downloading updates..." / "Saving report.doc, please wait...")

so far i see the following options, please correct me or provide with additional ones, or info on languages i have not mentioned

#german / #deutsch: passive voice with phrases such as "wird heruntergeladen" (is being downloaded)

#french / #français: nouns corresponding to verbs, such as "lecture" (reading), "téléchargement" (down-/uploading) and "enregistrement" (saving)

#russian / #русский: likewise verbal nouns, such as "чтение" (reading), "загрузка" (loading/uploading), "сохранение" (saving)

#italian / #italiano: verbal nouns ending in -aggio

#japanese / #日本語: verbs ending in 中

#l10n #i18n #translation

GunChleoc 21h ago

@rnd Scottish Gaelic:

’Ga luchdadh a-nuas: At its downloading

A' luchdadh a-nuas nan ùrachaidhean: At downloading [the updates]genitive

luchdadh is a verbal noun, the language has no infinitive

Also, no word for "please", we just drop it.

We also drop all occurrences of "successfully", because it's just filler.

@rnd "Is being downloaded" sounds correct for #greek too

Oliver Czulo 19h ago

@rnd I'd argue that the passive voice in German doesn't actually cover the processual aspect, but is used because so you avoid to have to chose between formal or informal address. If you want to highlight an ongoing process (which you don't need to do, grammatically spoken), you'd either add a small word such as "gerade" or you could use a form like "am/beim Herunterladen". The latter, however, is considered colloquial speech and varies regionally.

I see a further possible reason for ...

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Oliver Czulo 19h ago

@rnd ... the use of passive voice in German. English can have so-called unagentive nouns in subject position such as in "The file is downloading". A literal translation into German would read as though it was the file that is downloading something. When using the passive voice, you don't need to specify who or what is downloading something, but it is clearly not the file.

BTW, in case anyone ever wondered why you might need a trained translators for a good i18n and l10n, this is why :)

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/dev/urandom 19h ago

@OliverCzulo yeah, it took me seeing a bunch of really bad software translations to realize how important good and consistent localization is

the purpose of this thread specifically is to collect data and determine how best to translate such phrases into #esperanto, because i likewise see several different options of varying quality (my preferred option so far is to follow the french/italian/russian format and use a verbal noun, especially since it's easy to come up with verbal nouns in esperanto, but i see the german-style passive voice form as valid, too)

eddy berthier 19h ago

@rnd in french, I believe there would almost universally be the addition of "en cours" after the description of the action. "Téléchargement en cours" meaning "Download ongoing"

Neo Ehproque 19h ago

@rnd Spanish: "descargando archivo" , "abriendo archivo" (downloading/opening file". You can have an impersonal form like "the file is being downloaded" "el archivo se está descargando", but I don't think almost anyone bothers with that

Pablo Rodríguez 19h ago

#spanish / #español: Verbal nouns ending in -ando or -iendo.

/dev/urandom 19h ago

@ehproque looking at the dictionary, the -ando suffix forms gerund forms of verbs that function as nouns, so i guess it's similar to french/italian/russian in that respect?

Neo Ehproque 18h ago

@rnd I don't know any Italian or German, but the French is not equivalent: we use a different tense for the two meanings of reading: we use "leer" for "I like reading" (the activity, which is a noun), and "leyendo" for verbs that are in progress, as in "I'm reading this book" or "the software is reading this file".

Mi french is really limited, but I remember that they use "en train de [verb]" for their equivalent to our gerundio, and the ones you provided are more like "the downloading is happening" rather than "we are downloading"

@rnd For French, when you need to differentiate between the result and the action, you may add "en cours" (ongoing) e.g. "téléchargement en cours" (downloading) vs. "téléchargement" (downloaded files).

Axalote 19h ago

In Portuguese it's pretty much the same as english usually ending in -ando (equivalent to the english -ing in this case), e.g. "Baixando atualizações" (Downloading updates), "Salvando report.doc, por favor aguarde..." (Saving report.doc, please wait...).

Lesley Lai 19h ago

@rnd Chinese is the same as Japanese.

Loading: 载入中
Downloading: 下载中
Saving: 保存中

Lucas Werkmeister 18h ago

@rnd I don’t use much Portuguese-language software these days, but I have fond memories of some pieces of software, ca. Windows 2000 / XP era, announcing “carregando” (“loading” – gerund, as https://social.axalote.dev.br/@axalote/statuses/01KNH849NK0G91HWJFP7X1ZXQ3 says), illustrated with a little cartoon figure carrying moving boxes back and forth :3

(I would interpret that as the software talking about itself in the first person – “[eu estou] carregando” / “[I am] loading [something]”)

Axalote (@[email protected])

@rnd In Portuguese it's pretty much the same as english usually ending in -ando (equivalent to the english -ing in this case), e.g. "Baixando atualizações" (Downloading updates), "Salvando report.doc, por favor aguarde..." (Saving report.doc, please wait...).

social.axalote.dev.br

Amir E. Aharoni 18h ago

@rnd In #Hebrew, the one I usually use as a translator is something like "the action is being performed", for example "מתבצעת הורדת קבצים", literally "files downloading performs itself". It's a bit wordy, but the most precise. "Downloading" here is a noun, not a present continuous verb. מתבצעת is a reflexive verb.

Sometimes translators write "הורדת קבצים", which is just that noun, and doesn't express the current continuous action. Sometimes it's enough, but I usually don't do it.

Yaron Shahrabani 18h ago

@aharoni @rnd there are cases where I'm using terms like „ הקבצים נכתבים” which translates to "the files are being written" which is the action without the actor.

Amir E. Aharoni 18h ago

@yaron @rnd I often think about this philosophically: *who* is the actor? The human user? The program? The computer? The file? The company that developed the program? I don't have an answer...

Yaron Shahrabani 17h ago

@aharoni
So unless I specifically specified it in the string or around it I prefer not to mention what it is, mostly from gender bias perspective.
@rnd

/dev/urandom 17h ago

@aharoni @yaron in russian localization specifically, the most common option is:

address the user in second person specifically when something needs to be asked from the user
avoid referring to the computer in any person (buttons that say things like "Apply", "Cancel", "Save" etc. are written in the infinitive, in addition to the verbal nouns mentioned in OP they're also used for messages like "Unable to save..." or "Error while downloading...")

i guess the idea is that the computer is a tool, while the user is the one operating that tool, and even if something is happening that the user did not want or ask for, the computer shall not be personified

Peter Krefting 18h ago

@rnd In Swedish, it's usually an active form, "Hämtar...", "Sparar...", corresponding to the -ing form in English.

Eduardo Pinho 10h ago

@rnd I've seen mentions of Portuguese already, but it's worth mentioning that in PT-PT (Portuguese from Portugal), the use of the preposition "a" followed by the verb in infinite (e.g. "a carregar" for "loading", "a processar dados" for "processing data" ) is often preferred over the gerund ("carregando" / "processando dados").

Terpomo Dek Unu 6h ago

@rnd En Esperanto mi kutime vidis la francan/rusan elekton.