About new noun translation and wording consistency in Chinese (Taiwan)

  • Unknown's avatar
    southp · Member ·

    Hi.
    I started to propose some translation and correction in zh-TW locale recently. As I went through it, two particular issues arose:

    1. I noticed some wording inconsistency. In particular, the word “comment” is translated as “留言” in some places, and “迴響” in other .

    2. Some nouns are untranslated and I have no idea are they intended to be left off as Taiwanese people are very used to see English nouns mixed in a Chinese sentence. ex. Omnisearch, Akismet, tweets.

    I’m wondering, what should I do or who should I ask whenever I have this kind of problems?

    Thanks :)

  • Unknown's avatar
    timethief · Member ·

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  • druesome · Staff ·

    Hi southp!

    Thanks for contacting us.

    I noticed some wording inconsistency. In particular, the word “comment” is translated as “留言” in some places, and “迴響” in other .

    In our glossary, “comment” is translated to “留言”. Do you think that this translation should be used across the board over the other one?

    Some nouns are untranslated and I have no idea are they intended to be left off as Taiwanese people are very used to see English nouns mixed in a Chinese sentence. ex. Omnisearch, Akismet, tweets.

    Not sure if I understand correctly, but do you mean that some nouns such as Omnisearch or Akismet are being translated, when they shouldn’t be?

    In light of this, would you be interested in coming on board as our reviewer for ZH-TW? As a reviewer you’ll be contacted to review translations from our vendors. If you’re keen on joining, I’ll send you an email containing more details. Thank you!

  • Unknown's avatar
    southp · Member ·

    In our glossary, “comment” is translated to “留言”. Do you think that this translation should be used across the board over the other one?

    I’ll suggest use “留言”.
    As far as I know, “迴響” was indeed there for quite a while as a commonly-used translation for “comment”. However, most blogging platform use “留言” instead. ex. blogger, yam, and pixnet. The latter two are possibly the dominated two in Taiwan.

    Btw, I didn’t notice there is a “glossary” page. I was wondering if there was one. Thanks a lot :D

    Not sure if I understand correctly, but do you mean that some nouns such as Omnisearch or Akismet are being translated, when they shouldn’t be?

    Sorry that my statements were super vague :(
    In short, I’m wondering if these proper nouns are intentionally untranslated, or should we discuss a translation for them?

    For example, “Omnisearch” is just “Omnisearch” in zh-TW.
    However, it is “一括檢索” in Japanese, which is a super catchy and concise in my opinion :D

    In light of this, would you be interested in coming on board as our reviewer for ZH-TW? As a reviewer you’ll be contacted to review translations from our vendors. If you’re keen on joining, I’ll send you an email containing more details. Thank you!

    Please take me on board! I’d love to see what I can help : )

  • druesome · Staff ·

    I’ll suggest use “留言”.

    Duly noted! I’ll make sure that this translation is used going forward.

    In short, I’m wondering if these proper nouns are intentionally untranslated, or should we discuss a translation for them?

    Omnisearch and Akismet are proper nouns, and in general we prefer that they are left untranslated. However, discussions are always a good thing and we are open to having one regarding that. :)

    Please take me on board! I’d love to see what I can help : )

    I’ve just sent you an email. ;)

  • Unknown's avatar
    naokomc · Member ·

    I’m the one who translated Omnisearch to 一括検索 in Japanese (FYI, it means “batch search”).

    I always keep product names (WordPress.com, Akismet, Jetpack, Gravatar, etc.) untranslated but decided to translate this into Japanese words. I think this one can be an exception since it’s not really a “product name” per se. And the original is meant to be descriptive but isn’t very easy to understand for non-English speakers.

  • Unknown's avatar
    akerbeltzalba · Member ·

    Most product owners are quite touchy actually about having their product names translated or transliterated unless they themselves have made a corporate decision to do so. Microsoft for example is very strict and uses “Office” and “Windows” in Latin characters only.
    Contrast with this Coca Cola which decided to use 可口可樂.

    Linguistically there are pros and cons to either approach but in real life, the convention of almost all professional translators is to leave product names in the source language and writing system unless there is an official translation or transliteration.

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