Hello all,
today, I've written a mail to fsfe-de regarding a problem with the German translation of the campaign headline (it's not yet confirmed, I currently use my work mail account). After reading MJ Ray's message through pipermail (I have not subscribed to discussion@...), I realize now that we have a problem with the campaign title in English, too. I'm not that good at English, so please correct me if I'm wrong.
When we speak about someting, we refer _either_ to its meaning _or_ to the term itself. It's unclear what "speaking _about_" something refers to.
I don't know whether "talking of sth." is the right wording so that it's clear that we talk about the term "Free Software", not its meaning.
In German, Wolfgang translated it as "über etw. sprechen", not "von etw. sprechen", which would be the way in German to avoid that ambiguity.
Comments by English native speakers highly appreciated.
Bye, Christian
|| On Thu, 06 Sep 2001 14:46:25 +0200 || Christian Selig sledge@warptec.com wrote:
cs> When we speak about someting, we refer _either_ to its meaning cs> _or_ to the term itself. It's unclear what "speaking _about_" cs> something refers to.
cs> I don't know whether "talking of sth." is the right wording so cs> that it's clear that we talk about the term "Free Software", not cs> its meaning.
I have also thought about this potential problem when writing the text, but thought that we want people to speak (and think) *about* Free Software. This is furthered by using the term, I think.
Therefore I felt "about" was slightly better than "of" but people may disagree. Changing it gets harder every day because the companies are preparing their releases, so we should probably only change it if we feel it needs to be done or makes a major difference. What do you think?
Regards, Georg
"Georg C. F. Greve" wrote:
|| On Thu, 06 Sep 2001 14:46:25 +0200 || Christian Selig sledge@warptec.com wrote:
cs> When we speak about someting, we refer _either_ to its meaning cs> _or_ to the term itself. It's unclear what "speaking _about_" cs> something refers to.
cs> I don't know whether "talking of sth." is the right wording so cs> that it's clear that we talk about the term "Free Software", not cs> its meaning.
I have also thought about this potential problem when writing the text, but thought that we want people to speak (and think) *about* Free Software. This is furthered by using the term, I think.
Therefore I felt "about" was slightly better than "of" but people may disagree. Changing it gets harder every day because the companies are preparing their releases, so we should probably only change it if we feel it needs to be done or makes a major difference. What do you think?
I don't want to sound unfriendly, but I consider "about" as a serious mistake. Talking "about" Free Software is what we do the whole time. We talk about _the_ _meaning_ of Free Software. When we want to talk explicitly why we use _the_ _term_ Free Software, then it has to be clear in any language.
Bye, Christian