Greetings, all! I appreciate the discussions and the concerns about the username reflected in screenshots, and I can understand the importance of making the manual as usable and meaningful to as many languages as possible. It does seem, however, that the discussion is getting mired in acceptable "name holders" used in various languages, and to include the multitude of possibilities across all translations of the manual would force the translation teams to be involved in more than just "translating" the manual, which, too, has already been mentioned in this thread. And when the name has been changed, we then would have to consider the language of the text in the screenshots...and then the language in the text of the applications, which most always are in English, and then, and then......
So not to be a Debby Downer (a common name used in English for someone who changes the tone, tenor, or direction of a discussion or activity by what they say or do), but I only see two solutions worth considering: - have screenshot teams in every language in which the manual is (or will be) translated capture language-specific screenshots to be included only in those translations. - place a disclaimer at the beginning of all manuals explaining that the screenshots included in all translations of the manual represent standard English conventions and that other languages and constructs may change the textual representation and/or layout of the what is actually seen locally on the user's computer. I'm in favor of the latter. On Fri, Aug 10, 2012 at 9:19 AM, Carsten Gerlach <daswaldh...@gmx.de> wrote: > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > Hash: SHA1 > > Hello, > > Am 10.08.2012 00:50, schrieb Patrick Dickey: > > This isn't related to the username issue, per se (except maybe in > > a general way). Do you have a name for "John Q. Public" in German? > > In English, John Q. or John Q. Public is generally meant for "the > > common man" or the public in general. Wikipedia suggests a few > > names, but which one is generally used? > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Q._Public > > In Germany we would use "Otto Normalverbraucher" [1] for the typical > ordinary German person. He is used for statistical and marketing > research purposes... > > > How it's generally related to this, is since Ubuntu (and the > > manual) are geared for the ordinary user, maybe that would be a > > better username instead of the "John Doe", "Erika Mustermann" > > options. > > ... but "Erika Mustermann" is used as a place holder name for example > on the German identity card [2] or on forms [3]. I think Ubuntu and > our manual is made for _all_ people and not only for the ordinary. So > for the German version of our manual "Erika Mustermann" fits better as > "Otto Normalverbraucher". > > I can't say what the best choice would be for the English version, > this have to decide the native speakers. Then I would recommend to > mention this name in the style guide. > > > Greetings, Carsten > > > [1] http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Normalverbraucher > [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_identity_card > [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Form_%28document%29 > > > > - -- > Hier ist mein öffentlicher GPG-Schlüssel: > http://daswaldhorn.piranho.de/gpg/ > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- > Version: GnuPG v1.4.11 (GNU/Linux) > Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/ > > iEYEARECAAYFAlAlNKsACgkQ6SlDN6cxaI5uowCeIXEehsw09uh9nw0DrOuDURqA > ijwAn2Tzo5IPWiYEbqg70dOHRwMdhhVb > =m2Xk > -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- > > _______________________________________________ > Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-manual > Post to : ubuntu-manual@lists.launchpad.net > Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-manual > More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp >
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