When one is translating software, some times the original strings are not clear enough.

#. Type: text
#. Description
#. Menu entry
#. Use infinitive form
#: ../partman-lvm.templates:45
msgid "Delete volume group"
msgstr ""

For example, what’s this? Is this the option to delete a volume group you have selected, or is this the option to select a volume group and then delete it? Because the translation for each case would be different: “Borrar o grupo de volumes” versus “Borrar un grupo de volumes”. The difference is just a definite vs. an indefinite article.

In fact, it could have been clear in the original English text:

msgid "Delete a volume group"

or

msgid "Delete the volume group"

Well, at least it has a note saying it’s infinitive, not imperative. I won’t translate it erroneously as if it read “you, user, delete the volume group at once!”.

This message was paid for by the Platform For More Articles In Program Text.

Ana was intrigued by the idiom “to open a can of worms” tonight. There are two English idioms I like, too: “to stir the pot” (when you do it, what used to be in the bottom rises to the surface) and “the shit has hit the fan” (no need to explain what happens when viscous matter gets in contact with an object that revolves at a high speed).

But one word that intrigued me, in turn, was “aftermath”. What’s it? The feeling you get after solving a particularly difficult mathematical problem? Well, no. Apparently “a math” is a mowing (of grass or hay or whatever), and the aftermath is “the grass that grows after the first crop of hay in the same season” (Webster, 1913).

While translating ClamAV’s debconf templates I found this:

msgid "Gracefully handle left-over Unix socket files?"

I wonder what the alternative is. Crash and burn?

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Apparently DebConfers are misbehaving. I think signage should be distributed around the vacational centre. Here is my contribution, to be put on top of the 10-metre diving board. Or by the pool.

Click on the thumbnail for the good stuff.

Every once in a while, there is an argument in the debian-legal mailing list: a particular package was rejected because its license didn’t comply with the DFSG, and someone asks for Debian to relax its interpretation of the DFSG. This package, they say, is very important and useful, and the Social Contract states that users are our priority, and, after all, the DFSG are only guidelines and can be skipped every once in a while. I don’t subscribe to this line of thinking.

The DFSG are not only a set of “features” the license of a work must have to consider that work “free”: they are a list of promises to our users about what they will be able to do with everything they receive from us. For example, when DFSG#2 says that “the license must allow modifications and derived works, and must allow them to be distributed under the same terms as the license of the original software”, this means to our users: “everything you get from Debian you’ll be authorized to modify, and then give your modified copy to anyone under the same terms as when you received your copy”.

That’s why when someone says “the DFSG are just guidelines, we can bypass them just for this very useful package” it would not be proper to actually do it, as we would not be living up to our own promises.

This post was not triggered by any particular event; I just wanted to write something not containing a doctored photo or a joke :-)

14:29 <jacobo> ains, Joey's confession
14:29 <jacobo> that is always happening to me, but worse
14:29 <jacobo> should I put “confession++” in my nametag?
14:29 <jacobo> or something like that
14:29 <jacobo> I could create the Confession Commons
14:29 <jacobo> and then I would say that I’m CC with some options
14:29 <jacobo> for example
14:30 <jacobo> CC-ff
14:30 <jacobo> Confession Commons - Forgets Faces
14:30 <jacobo> CC-fn (Forgets Names)
14:30 <jacobo> CC-hp (Has Prosopagnosia)
14:30 <jacobo> CC-sp (Scared of People)
14:31 <jacobo> and combine
14:31 <jacobo> CC-ff-sp
14:32 <jacobo> this is so big a load of nonsense that it’s well-suited for
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