translating to my language

[ey51]

Hello
I would like to translate "Avast!" to my native language.
The program has not yet been translated to my native language, and I was wondering if there was a payoff for doing so, (such as Pro license?). After all, it is helping further spread and better market the product.
Cheers!
-Eyal
I can be reached at eyalyab@fastmail.fm

[Lisandro]

Hello
I would like to translate "Avast!" to my native language.
The program has not yet been translated to my native language, and I was wondering if there was a payoff for doing so, (such as Pro license?). After all, it is helping further spread and better market the product.
Cheers!
-Eyal
I can be reached at eyalyab@fastmail.fm

Wellcome. I translated avast! into Portuguese (Brazilian). You can see the other translators here: http://www.avast.com/i_idt_1521.html

Btw, which is your native language?  

[ey51]

Thanks for welcoming me.
I saw that page and that's where I came up with the question.
My native language is Hebrew.
Its a right-to-left language, so it can get tricky translating at times. I already translated a program to hebrw once, so I have a bit of experience with it.
Cheers!
-Eyal

[igor]

After we have successfully (I hope!) conquered Japanese, there is another challenge?  

You say you have already translated a program to hebrew... can you tell us something more about possible problems to occur?

[pk]

After we have successfully (I hope!) conquered Japanese, there is another challenge?  

Heh, good challenge but I would say, avast engine is already ready for hebrew language - at least scanner scans such files. Will GUI be only problem ? Igor, look at: http://www.cs.technion.ac.il/~orenso/HebJuggler/Pics/Screenshots/SettingsHeb.gif .

[igor]

Sure, I meant the GUI... I'm not afraid about the scanner, it should be OK.

[ey51]

Challenge, eh.. =]
Well, I can say this, transferring an English gui to Hebrew is tricky for the fact everything is right to left. I hadn't seen what the avast! gui looks like but in some cases where the whole gui is designed with left-to-right orientation its hard to make it feel comfortable when you replace everything with a right-to-left language.
For instance, everything should be alligned to the right rather than to the left. Another thing is places in hte gui where there's a line of text followed by a gui object like a radio button and then the text continues. This is impossible to get exact when going right-to-left. I makred such a thing on this proggie i translated with red dots. Have a look
http://t2.technion.ac.il/~seyy/lansearchpro01.gif
http://t2.technion.ac.il/~seyy/lansearchpro02.gif

btw, the link someone pasted before is to a webspace of someone who goes to the same university as me =]
cheers!
-ey51

[ey51]

one more thing popped to my mind. digits and hebrew fonts dont mix well on computers. The digits are typed left-to-right but the hebrew chars left-to-right. this causes that the number appears after the word in describes instead of before it. For example:
files were found 64
instead of
64 files were found
this can be fixed sometimes by manipulating the internal order of characters and other objects in a sentance.
I have to run now.
bye

[igor]

I'm not sure if I understand the last post. You mean that the software often uses given piece of text and appends the number afterwards, which is wrong in hebrew display? (however, it it's like "files found: %d", it can be simply changed to "%d files found", which is correct even when translated to hebrew?)
Well, if it's so, you are right... such problems would certainly appear...

As for the image number 2 in the post before - you mean that to be correct, the comboboxes should be on the left side and the checkboxes on the right side? This particular thing may be quite easy to solve... we use a special translation tool to create the language packs - and we can use (slightly) different resources for each language. So, moving the controls to other positions is not a problem.
Hmm, thinking of it... moving the controls wouldn't be a problem, but the TAB order would stay the same as in the English original... which may be a little confusing  


I wanted to ask - yesterday, somebody sent me some screenshots of our avast! Virus Cleaner - and it included a screenshot of its log file, opened in hebrew Notepad. I was surprised to see some strange "text transformations" applied.
For example, the English text Memory scanning started... was displayed as ...Memory scanning started (with right alignment), the date 22/03/2004, 22:00:46 was displayed as 22:00:46 ,22/03/2004, and maybe the worst one:
Memory scanning finished (68.4s).
was displayed as
.(Memory scanning finished (68.4s

Why is Notepad manipulating the lines of a text file this way? I'm not completely sure what it's trying to achieve, but obviously it fails miserably.

[ey51]

First there are two things I need to explain. There is right-to-left and left-to-right text orientation (Ctrl+Shift to switch between). In right-to-left text orientation the scrollbar would appear on the left for instance.
In addition, when switching between right-to-left and left-to-right keyboard layout (Alt+Shift) the text cursor changes direction because of the nature of right-to-left languages =]

When typing in a left-to-right character set, while being in a right-to-left text orientation (not right text allignment), then symbols and punctuation such as commas, periods, parenthesis and so on that were typed in last in the left-to-right character set (English for instance) will appear in the BEGINNING of the text block UNTIL some more text is typed in. So when typing in English but in right-to-left text orientation, characters that get misplaces like that can be shown correctly by typing them in at the beginning of the line (even though they should be at the end). This makes it look correct, when in fact its not, and if you would change back to left-to-right orientation it will look displaced.

In your example, if you'd want it to look right, you would type those lines the way you see them when they are misplaced.
typing this:
.(Memory scanning finished (68.4s
will look like this:
Memory scanning finished (68.4s).
when in right-to-left orientation.

There is also the issue of the hebrew paranthesis and the english parenthesis. When in right-to-left orientation and typing in English, the right and left parenthesis become negatives. Typing a right parenthesis will input a left parenthesis.

This is frustrating eh? =]
Hebrew looks good only in the bible

[ey51]

Here's a visible example:

This is the raw input. In the first window we have right-to-left text orientation and on the second lower one left-to-right text orientation with the same raw text input.

line 1 = Memory scanning finished (68.4s).
line 2 = .(Memory scanning finished (68.4s
line 3 =  Memory scannig finished (68.4). endOfLineText
line 4 = .(Memory scanning finished (68.4s endOfLineText

http://t2.technion.ac.il/~seyy/text.orientation.gif