Translation Standards and Contribution Guidelines

[peruibeloko]

@nazarepiedady @odsantos @jonnathan-ls

It has come to my attention that the lack of a common basis on what to translate and how is creating a couple of problems in recent contributions.

This forum should solve this issue with two key artifacts:

• A guide for translation standards, by which all reviews and translations should abide by
• Approval by majority on the proposed Update README and CONTRIBUTING #428 Contribution Guidelines, with any additions deemed necessary.

I'd like to kick off the discussion by pointing out recent discussions I've had with Nazaré, regarding competing translation standards, which got a bit out of hand. The relevant issues are #428 and #415.

• What should we keep in English for familiarity sake?
• What English words with no clear Portuguese equivalent should we try and translate?
• Are there any guidelines we should establish regarding expressing our personal preferences regarding translations? How should they play into the translation itself?
• Should our comments and reviews be in English or Portuguese?

[peruibeloko]

I'd also ask for some attention to this discussion because I'm starting to feel a bit demotivated by the aggressive discussions and the lack of a clear direction to follow, and I wouldn't like for that to be the case for other contributors or maintainers :/

[danilolmc]

Great @peruibeloko, sometimes I don't know what tone to use in translations, leading increasing review time in greater articles.

[odsantos]

@peruibeloko as far as I see you're doing a good work and probably it would be beneficial if continued.

As far as I remember, variable names and a few other words should not be translated, such as 'Importance' in exercises and in general those at the start code block examples beginning with three backtiks.

Probably, almost all should be translated, unless easier to understand in English, such as 'string' instead of 'cadeia de caracteres', for instance.

Perhaps, comments should be in English.
@iliakan apparently is the site owner and he does not speak Portuguese, so it might probably not be polite to leave him without a clue of what is being discussed in any section related to it.

Looking forward to continue reading from you.
Thank you.

[nazarepiedady]

@odsantos, I was not talking about the content of the code, but the content of the articles, I think we will not go forward if we continue to do the same things even when we have other good options, I can not count how many Portuguese-speaking colleagues that since they do not know how to translate certain words and concepts to Portuguese just refer the English, because we still translating content in such way that say "we do not know how to say the same thing in Portuguese", there is a lot of confusion every time we choose to mix up English and Portuguese as we can not speak entirely in Portuguese about the same topics.

I think it is because of this absence of competence on speaking Portuguese that I see many people who speak so badly Portuguese and English as well.

I raised up these topics to discuss because in the past, I was corrected about translating the content in such a way that was not "familiar" to all Portuguese-speaking people, this year I am hearing that we should use the Brazilian model of speaking to translating a content that is supposed to be for all Portuguese-speaking people, you must note this somewhere for all people to see that we use "Brazilian Portuguese" to translate the content. I have a collection of dictionaries, and I do not have any problem learning more about the language I received when I was born.

[peruibeloko]

@odsantos @nazarepiedady Makes sense, so Brazilian Portuguese it is, I'll add that to the contribution guidelines.

Probably, almost all should be translated, unless easier to understand in English, such as 'string' instead of 'cadeia de caracteres', for instance.

@odsantos so things like "website", "string", "link", are better kept in English, which I agree.