Transliterate or not to transliterate (was Re: [Fedora-trans-ar] arabic-fedora.org logo)

[Munzir Taha]

On Yaum al-Khamees 05 Shawwal 1425 17:28, Mohamed Eldesoky wrote:
> Well, Linux itself is a trademark !!
> We do write Linux in Arabic as  لينكس !!

I know we would reach this critical point ;) Well, ahem! Cough!
Mohamed, I prefer to leave this as it's. Linux as it's. I am not saying it's 
wrong to transliterate it. I am not saying my suggestion is better. What I 
want to say is first we need to be consistent. It's not correct to 
transliterate some products and leave the others just because it sounds to 
you/me acceptable. Second, this is not something new. Actually, MS and apple 
(who precede us in the field of translation of programs and operating 
systems) always leave their OS name and software as it is. If any one here 
has a Windows or Mac installed, he can go and check that they never translate 
words such as Windows, Office, Word, Excel, Access, Clarix Works(?), ...

Let alone other famous companies like adobe, macromedia, ... and their 
products: Photoshop, Flash, ...

Most people don't even feel it. Arab users who don't know a single English 
word would be able to identify their MS Word program from the menu and work 
with it. If you ask them whether it's in English or Arabic after they shut 
down their computers they won't remember ;)

> > I agree. The problem is common to all non-latin languages. However, I
> > think the question may be relevant to application names, package names,
> > but not so much with regard to the distribution name, 

This distinction based on what?

> > which imho 
> > can/should also be rendered in the target language with or without the
> > English version. It would probably contribute to making fedora in
> > particular, or linux in general, familiar to common people.

Windows is so popular now without doing this ;)

Please don't tell me about translations you saw in newspapers, books, 
magazines, your friend notes, ... I am speaking about official products 
translation.

Again, I am still putting the track and won't drag the thread until I have 
clear arabization. What do you suggest for these:

KCalc
KFAX
KMines
OpenOffice.org Writer


I am not trying to challenge you, I just want to help you reach quickly what I 
feel you would reach after many weeks of translation.

-- 
Munzir Taha  PGP Key available
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Telecommunications and Electronics Engineer
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