How Similar Do Language Variables Need to Be Across Languages?

Whether writing new language entries or translating entries from a different language, the question will often arise - how similar should we try to make language entries between different languages? 

Generally, we have to accept that there will be differences between how things are phrased or labelled in different languages - as long as each language is correct, inoffensive and aesthetically pleasing within its own rules, then they will often be slightly different. Gender main-streaming in German is making that extremely clear - what is offensive in German, isn't offensive in English!

1 Order of Priorities

The following order of priorities (in descending importance) makes a good guideline:

Correct > Inoffensive > Aesthetically Pleasing > Similar to Other Languages.

1.1 Correct

The most important thing is that language entries in ILIAS accurately describe or predict the behaviour of what actually happens at that point in ILIAS. The English phrase 'it does what it says on the tin' serves as a good guideline - we don't want to be playing 'lucky dip' with our tinned goods any more than we do when selecting options in ILIAS! Dog's food on toast is nobody's idea of a good evening meal.

1.2 Inoffensive

We don't want to offend people, so, always choose the least offensive way of expressing something. It doesn't matter if you are personally offended by something - think, will other people get irritated by, for example, 'his/her'? If so, replace it with 'their'. It is still correct and avoids stress and discomfort! What is offensive will vary from language to language and culture to culture of course - this is where we start seeing divergences between language entries across different languages.

1.3 Aesthetically Pleasing

After we have made sure that a language entry is correct and inoffensive, it is worth thinking... Is there a more aesthetically pleasing way of phrasing or expressing what you are trying to say? This is something that happens often when translating from one language to another. You can translate from German to English rather too accurately. What you have written is strictly speaking correct and also inoffensive, but sounds very German and is usually not very 'pretty' in English.

1.4 Similar to Other Languages

The final thing worth considering is making language entries similar to those used in other languages, if possible. The advantage of this is that it will be easier for multilingual users and developers to switch between different languages (mainly English and German) when dealing with bug reports, etc. Often, however, this will prove rather tricky - linguistic and cultural factors will mean that differences between the language variables will occur when trying to make sure that they are correct, inoffensive and aesthetically pleasing. Making language entries similar to each other across languages is the little dot on the i... erm no.... I mean, the icing on the cake. But it is not always possible.

2 Practical Example

 Here is an example of a thought process using the order of priorities:

The term 'execute' came to my attention when I noticed it being used as the 'Ausführen' button in conjunction with removing users from a group or participants from a list. In this usage scenario we can look at it through the lens of our list of priorities.

• Correct: Yes - Execute is correct.
• Inoffensive: Hmmm - I rather think that it might offend some people.
• Aesthetically pleasing: Even if I am not personally offended, I do find it a bit macabre and not terribly aesthetic.
• Similar to other languages: Yes - it is a 1:1 translation of the German.

Now, as 'Execute' is potentially offensive and aesthetically 'dodgy', it would make sense to find an alternative - as long as that alternative does not clash with the higher priority 'Correctness' and therefore make the label incorrect! 

I considered many alternatives: 'Carry Out', 'Implement', 'Make it so!', 'Party On, Dude!'... Let's look at the thought process for the example: Carry Out.

• Correct: Yes - 'Carry Out' is correct!
• Inoffensive: Nobody could be offended by 'Carry Out'.
• Aesthetically pleasing: No... not really. It feels a bit rubbish on buttons.
• Similar to other languages: Yes - it is also a pretty clean translation of the German.

So, if nothing else occurred to me, 'Carry Out' would be an improvement on 'Execute'. They are both not terribly aesthetically pleasing, but 'Carry Out' isn't offensive.

After discussing the issue on Discord I was steered again in the direction of something I had previously dismissed as being not similar enough to the German (I wasn't using a structured list of priorities to assess the options then): Apply.

• Correct: Well... yes! I tried it out in various settings, and 'Apply' is correct. When the user has selected an option - clicking on 'Apply' makes total sense.
• Inoffensive: Yes - totally inoffensive!
• Aesthetically pleasing: It is fine. It won't win awards for poetic beauty - but it is fine!
• Similar to other languages: No - it doesn't quite have the same meaning as in German, but is still correct.

'Apply' is therefore clearly better than 'Execute' as it is still correct, but doesn't cause any offence and is aesthetically better. This only applies to button labels - each use of the execute was evaluated separately. In other situations terms like 'carry out' and 'run' were deemed to be correct or aesthetically pleasing.

3 Summary

If possible, it is nice if the language variables in the most commonly used languages in ILIAS (German, English, Italian, French, Klingon) are as similar to each other as possible, but not at the expense of their correctness, inoffensiveness or aesthetics. 

If you have been given this link because you enquired in a bug report or discord post, why the German and English versions of certain language variables are dissimilar, then there is probably a good reason for that.  Efforts to make them more similar probably clashed with one of the other (more important) priorities. However, we are only human, so if you have a suggestion that works well - we are happy to admit that you can do our jobs better than we can and won't at all be bitter and resentful...