QUOTE (teo @ May 17 2008, 03:34) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
@Ken,
Aviary.pl is team which make translation of Firefox, Thunderbird, Flock, SeaMonkey, Sunbird, Lighting, Bugzilla, SUSE and occasionally extensions. We have our system review. I'm this team member. On BabelZilla some national teams make review on national forums.
Thank you for this background, it does help settle many of my concerns.
QUOTE (teo @ May 17 2008, 03:34) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
First of all 'Classic Compact' should be translated to Polish "Klasyczne kompaktowe". Previous I intentionally used your translation. If I use your translation model, 'Classic Compact Options' should be translated "Opcje motywu Klasycznego kompaktowego (Classic Compact)". Take many place and awful in Polish. That's all from my hands.
I don't fully understand what you are saying here, but I think you meant to say that the Polish translation of the title would be too long and is a little confusing. The name "Classic Compact Options" is a confusing in English as well until one understands that "classic compact" refers to the name of the theme and thus is a proper noun, not a pair of adjectives, then it starts to make more sense.
Without context the name "Classic Compact" makes no sense in English. When put into context in the AMO themes section, however, the name "Classic Compact" becomes a very good description of what the theme is about. In relation to Firefox 3, the word "classic" indicates that the theme has classic/traditional toolbar button styling and the word "compact" indicates a theme that uses very little space.
The problem with translating the title "Classic Compact Options" is that it won't make any sense without a broader context. My wife had problems with this as well. She was okay translating "Classic Compact" as "КлаÑÑичеÑкой Компактной" but she couldn't grasp the idea that "КлаÑÑичеÑкой Компактной" was a proper noun in the context of the extension and that "ÐаÑтройки" simply indicated that this was the options panel for "КлаÑÑичеÑкой Компактной". She insisted on adding the noun "темы" so that in English the name for the extension would be "Options for the theme Classic Compact". In English, "Options for the theme Classic Compact" does make more sense than "Classic Compact Options" but it is also too long just like "Opcje motywu Klasycznego kompaktowego" is too long.
If we don't try to make grammatical sense of the name and instead use it as a string of descriptive words and assume the user will understand the context of those words (as I am doing in English) then we can shorten the name to "Opcje Klasycznego Kompaktowego". On the "Tools" menu this description would make sense to users and it would make sense to users when used in the context of the theme "Klasycznego Kompaktowego". It would at least make more sense to someone who could not read English than "Opcje Classic Compact", which would have no meaning what so ever. Think of it this way, since I don't speak Polish if I came across an extension titled a theme titled "Klasycznego Kompaktowego" or an extension "Klasycznego Kompaktowego options" it would mean nothing to me. I wouldn't be able to pronounce their names. If, however, "Klasycznego Kompaktowego" was translated into English, it would be grammatically awkward, but I could understand the idea being conveyed if put in context.
From a marketing standpoint when looking at a page full of extensions or themes with English names, a theme or extension with a name that is localized to the language of the user reviewing the page will catch the attention of the user. Even if the name is a little awkward it might just stop the user long enough to take a closer look.
QUOTE (teo @ May 17 2008, 03:34) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
One remarks about English version. You used in the options window lower case characters for options name, but for AMO upper case. This is intentionally?
Yes this is intentional to make the description on the AMO page more readable as I had no formatting ability on AMO. It would have been better to use a real bullet list instead of asterisks and to bold the option names, but I could only use plain text so I made a fake bullet list and made each option name if full caps.