KDE British English Translation

KDE native for the Commonwealth

Why?

The majority of native English speakers speak British English; as well as Scotland, England, Wales and Ireland it is used in the 54 countries of the Commonwealth and beyond.

Translating into en_GB from en_US also has the dual function of acting as high-quality proofreaders for KDE programs and documentation.

Who?

Active

John Knight - Team founder, former team coordinator;
Malcolm Hunter - British English Translation Team coordinator, KDE proofreader, DirkGently on IRC;
Jonathan Riddell - Umbrello developer, Riddell on IRC;
Andrew Coles - Grammar pedant.

Previous Contributors

Ken Knight;
Aston Clulow;
Dwayne Bailey - now working on South-African languages.

Chat is available on irc.kde.org channel #kde-devel and #kde-docs
Important Links

http://i18n.kde.org KDE Internationalisation Home (You will find the KDE Translation HOWTO on the home page)
http://i18n.kde.org/teams/index.php?action=info&team=en_GB Translators Centre en_GB entry
http://i18n.kde.org/stats/gui/HEAD/en_GB/index.php GUI Translation Stats
http://i18n.kde.org/stats/doc/HEAD/en_GB/index.php DOC Translation Stats

Mailing List

http://lists.quaker.eu.org/mailman/listinfo/kde-en-gb kde-en-gb mailing list

Use this to discuss or query a translation, tell others that you are about to translate something (to prevent them starting a translation before you've finished) and see CVS commits.
How to Translate

Join the mailing list

Checkout kde-i18n module from CVS (either through your KDE CVS account or through [anonymous CVS]. Note: If you only want to checkout the en_GB part, do: "cvs -z4 checkout kde-i18n/en_GB kde-i18n/templates".

In kde-i18n/en_GB/messages/ you will find directories for each of the KDE modules, looking at these in Konqueror shows how complete the .po translation files are.

Open up KBabel (which comes as part of KDE in the kdesdk module) and fill in your details, if this is the first time
Name and Localised Name mean your usual name (e.g. Bob Smith)
Full language name is British English, Language Code is en_GB
Language Mailing List is [email protected]
Under Settings->Configure Shortcuts change the shortcut for Next Fuzzy or Untranslated to something quicker, I recommend Ctrl+]
Change the shortcut for Previous Fuzzy or Untranslated to Ctrl+[
File->Open and open the .po translation file

Now you can go through the file with Ctrl+] to get to the next untranslated entry and Ctrl+Space to copy the American English to the translation.

Before you translate a file, post to the mailing list saying you are going to; this prevents other people starting a translation before you have finished yours.

Edit the translation

Remember to run the spellchecker over the .po file: there will be things that you have missed. Make sure you have a British English dictionary installed.

Take a note of any typos, including the file and line number (top right box), and add them to KDE_Typos

Either commit the file to CVS, email it to Malcolm, or put it on a webserver and send the URL to the mailing list where someone with CVS access will commit it for you.

Words to Translate

Watch out for

double l's being single l's
'ou' being 'o'
're' being 'er'
lack of 'ue' on end of words
over use of ize which should be ise anyway

Some examples:

braces->curly brackets (unless trouser braces)
backward->backwards
canceled->cancelled
center->centre (but not if in HTML)
check->tick (when used in the sense of 'check this option')
color->colour
dialog->dialogue
fall->autumn
favorite->favourite
fill out->fill in
forward->forwards (when used as an adverb, but back/forward not changed)
globaly->globally
gray->grey
insure->ensure (unless talking about insurance)
ize->ise
ization->isation
license->licence (when used as a noun - ie. a licence, to license)
modeler->modeller
parentheses->brackets
toward->towards
utilize->use
#->no. (when used to represent "number")

Trash should be translated to Wastebin when referring to the desktop/file manager. Other situations can use either 'Wastebin' or 'Deleted Items' as seems most appropriate (KMail uses Deleted Items). Beware of Trash being used as a verb which should be translated as 'Move to Wastebin'.

Words not to Translate

program (not programme, when it's referring to a computer program)
disk (computer disk, other flat circular objects are disc)
font (not fount)
synthesize

Punctuation Differences

The Oxford Comma - standard US English usage is to put a comma before the and in lists of items, e.g. red, white, and blue; standard British English usage, however, is to leave it out, e.g: red, white and blue. More subtly "etc." (et cetera, i.e. and so on) should have a comma before it in US English; it shouldn't in British English.

Placing full stops inside brackets at the end of sentences - in US English the full stop is usually placed inside the brackets; in British English it is usually left outside.

Notes

Sometimes translator comments beginning with "_:" get messed up and are treated as text to be translated, or the text is so wide it won't fit nicely in the msgid window in KBabel. This happens with quanta.po. It can be fixed with:

msgmerge -o quanta.po quanta.po quanta.po