person's names

Wow - nice work, jp! OK - here goes:

"Meaning only"

"Check this option when you only want the meaning of your text without attention to form. "Meaning only" translations can be done by translators who do not speak the target language fluently, so they may be done more quickly."

"This translation request is "meaning only"."

""Meaning only" translations are more focused on the meaning than on the form or the grammar. However, even though you don't need to be a fluent speaker of language "XXX", you must have a very good knowledge of both languages (XXX and YYY) to do this translation."

"You are authorized to translate only into LLL"

"You are not authorized to translate into this language (LLL)".

"Please check this page for more information about this."

"We (translators) don't like translations of names. They only make sense when what is requested is simply a transcription from one alphabet to another. We will remove all requests not following this rule, with an excessive number of target languages, or without enough comments."

"We (translators) would like to avoid duplicated requests. Perform a search to be sure your request has not already been submitted by someone else." --> suggestion: "To be really sure that your translation is not a duplicate, try searching for just a few key words, since there are often variations."

"The goal of cucumis is not to do your homework. We might decide to remove any submission which appears to be homework."

[Here's my earlier suggestion: "The goal of cucumis is not to do your homework. Translation submissions which appear to be homework for school may be removed at the discretion of the administrators." ]

"Cucumis is not a dictionary. Unless there is a good reason (which should be mentioned in your comments), do not submit requests for the translation of single words."
[comment - it always sounds more official in English if you use "do not" instead of "don't" - it sounds more serious]

"I would like an administrator to check this page"

"Translation pages to check" --> ???

"NOTE: There is a discussion on this translation - please read it before evaluating."

Thanks to nava for letting me know this thread exists

I will tell you now that I refuse to do ANY more name translations unless they have some explanation about what they want (meaning, sound, etc; I don't mean the "I want to make a tatoo" note) or if I'm in a generous mood.

I know you all think it's valid to ask for a transcription of a name but I'm not here to help silly people with their silly requests.

Re homework: Kafetzou is right, you can "smell" it when a kid has asked for help that you wouldn't want him/her to get (I wouldn't have any problem with a kid asking e.g. how "dura lex sed lex" is in Latin ). I haven't seen anything resembling homework here (at least in the language pairs I frequent) but in other forums, I will not do the translation unless the student has already tried (in which case you can give some hints and not an out and out solution) or take my sweet time answering (I need a smiling devil emoticon!)

Oh yes - I really like the idea of the smiling devil emoticon - I need one - often!

Thx Kafetzou, that's a lot beter now!

For "Translation pages to check" I wanted a title for a page where all the red-flaged translations would be listed. I mean the pages where someone clicked on "I would like an administrator to check this page". Something like "Translations with problems reported by members" ?

Irini, thanks for your coments. About the warning of names, maybe we should be more strict, something like :

"We (translators) don't like translations of names. We will remove most of the requests unless you give us enough comments about which kind of translation you wish (sound, meaning), and where did you search before submitting here)."

Also, I wonder if your suggestion "We (translators) would like to avoid duplicated requests" is not a little bit too soft. I mean it's really a pain to se duplcated translations, maybe could you find something stronger than that ? Something like "We (translators) hate duplicated requests. You must absolutely perform a search..."

Hi jp

1) OK; "translation pages to be checked" would be better.

2) "... and where you searched before submitting your translation here."

3) "We (translators) hate duplicated requests" is fine. The only reason I changed it before is because it didn't sound very official, but that's OK.

Thx a lot. Maybe putting more human feelings in the warnings will be more efficient than official sentences. I hope so.

Apple:
About Latin, two very obvious considerations:
1) Latin is a dead language
2) The native speakers are also all dead.
Competence in Latin or in any other dead language is something really different from competence in spoken languages. The references about when and how to use one form or another are only in books: it's not easy, you can't learn Latin with a full immersion experience. To be a latinistis a life-time work (and not very amusing, I think!)


Voilà, je retours avec le discours "latin", eh bien, je concorde avec apple pour les (presque même) motifs suivants:
1) Le latin est une langue morte, donc elle n'est parlé par personne;
2) La très grande majorité des traductions demandées du latin ont étées soumises par étudiants qui ne font pas le propre "homework" ou par personnes qui veulent connaître la signification de textes de Giulio Cesare et choses comme ça, tandis qu'il suffirait une recherche avec Google. Les demandes de traduction vers le latin ont étées aussi soumises par quelques étudiants qui ne font pas le propre "homework", mais aussi - par brésiliens surtout - par personnes qui veulent une traduction d'un nom;
3) Les probabilités qu'un prof de latin tombe sur Cucumis sont lontaines;
4) Ils occupent d'éspace (et aussi de temps)
5) Autres motifs

Ah! J'ai oublié une chose!

Pour moi, ces 13 langues pourraient aussi disparaître de Cucumis:
Frison
Breton
Basque
Bengali
Malais
Klingon (Star trek)
Kurde
Néware
Mongol
Ourdou
Esperanto
Azéri
Vietnamien
En plus, (pour moi) il faut ou mettre deux langues (Grec ancien, Grec moderne), ou l'en spécifier un (Grec moderne)

Nava, don't be racist.

2 Greeks = ok.

I don't agree at all with you, Davide, on your last message. All languages represented here are spoken languages, even if they are by a minority of people, but I think they have got the right to be represented. Remember the conversation we had about Romanche language, so if this language was represented in Cucumis, would you ask for it to disappear?
I rather think that here in Cucumis, a lot of minoritary languages have got an opportunity to be known, and this is one more recognition for them being translated here at Cucumis, because even if they aren't spoken by a lot of people, they still are living languages, whitnesses of a culture that still exists, isn't dead yet, and hasn't been killed and absorbed yet by mondialism.

Perché razzista?

Veramente io non so niente di Greco... La differenza si vede o sono piccoli dettagli che cambiano?

But I agree with what you say about the ancient Greek, because we ow a lot to this language in our respective cultures, and it is as usefull as Latin, for instance, to increase our etymologic knowledge. Same as you, I don't know it at all, although I use a lot of French words coming from it.
But I think that ALL the languages can be represented at Cucumis, with no exception, as it is right that every human being on this earth has got the right to be understood by the others.
Maybe, as you said, a lot of these minoritary languages will not be translated on Cucumis, and many of them will be found only under the "other languages" banner, but at least people will know that they exist and that there are people who use them, even if only a few hundreds of thousand people read, write and express themselves in these minoritary languages...

Qu'est-ce que tu penses à propos du klingon?
Ok, alors je vais léver (de ma liste) le malais, le mongol, le vietnamien, le bengali, et l'azéri...

Je n'ai jamais dit (et jamais pensé)que le roumain doît disparaître...

As Francky says, every language has the right to be represented here. Here at least! If you ignore minorities, you'll let the globalization destroy our cultural differences. Differences are richness. Nations are worth for their cultural identity, not for how many they are. There should be globalization of rights, not of culture! And even if just one translation will be done from/into any of the languages you just said you don't want to see anymore, it will be a great victory for Cucumis.

Ok ok, vous avez raison...
Mais le klingon n'a aucune culture
Ok, alors je voudrais que le suisse allemand soit opérationnel. Je voudrais qu'il y a aussi une distinction entre l'anglais et l'américain.

I agree with Xini . Note that adding all those languages took me quite a while and I don't want to remove them unless you convince me it's actually a big improvement to remove languages

For Klingon, it was a request from an early visitor. I didn't know this community about klingon and I found it very fun. Did you know that google has a klingon version ?
http://www.google.com/intl/xx-klingon/

Mais oui bien sûr, pour gagner de l'argent alors j'invente le "Abrocamain"... Peut-être que je serai milionaire...

De quel argent tu parles ?
Which money are you talking about ?

I admit that other languages could have been featured before klingon.

Nava, per il Kligon, l'esperanto ecc. fatti un giro su questa pagina.

Per capire quanta ricchezza ci sia in qualsiasi lingua leggiti i primi capitoli del "Trattato di semiotica generale" (lo so, è noioso) di Umberto Eco.

How would having to Greek be logical? I mean it doesn't take long to type "I want it in ancient Greek" does it? If you want ancient or modern Greek of a particular era having two doesn't help either as you will have to note the period down anyway.

As for all the other languages around here. Klingon I know nothing about but I'm not opposed to either. My only disagreement would be with anything that has to do with chatspeak which has no place in a linguistic site. Other than that I'm not paying for them, I don't have to look them up, in fact I don't have to take any note of them at all. Why would it be a problem?