16 replies to this topic

[mellenbach]

In July I beg to translate RootsMagic also in the german language. Many other german genealogists have also this wish.
I can't understand, why it is for RootsMagic not possible, to translate this program also in german. Much more other great US-genealogie-progams are obtainable also in german.
Under german genealogists RootsMagic had a excellent reputation ("Besonders einfach zu bedienendes Ahnenprogramm mit exzellenten Datenverwaltungsmöglichkeiten").
Look here: -http://wiki-de.genealogy.net/RootsMagic-.
Because RootsMagic is only in english language, I also work always with FO 9.02.
Now, I hope, that the version 4 of RootsMagic became multilingual inclusive the german language. Than, I will buy suddenly this famous genealogie-programm

[Don Newcomb]

I would think that the book reports would be the most difficult.  There would have to be some language-neutral (multi-language?) system for encoding the necessary grammar. In English it's easy. All you have to do check the sex and prepend an "s" before "he" if it's female. In many other languages the gender must be reflected in other places.

To be more multinational RM will also have to be more friendly to non-Anglo naming conventions. For instance, we've been discussing the ability to ignore genitive surname prefixes (e.g. de, von, ap, ben, etc.) in surname lists.  RM is also fairly clumsy in dealing with Hispanic polynomial surnames. RM assumes that fathers always have the same surnames as their children and vice versa.   Which is also not the case in Sweden before a few years ago.  I would think it would be a good idea to have options to assume different types of naming conventions.  Add a daughter to a Swedish family and she automatically gets named "XXXXsdotr" based on the father's first name. Add a child to a Spanish family and he/she gets the paternal half of each parents' surnames.

[Romer]

mellenbach,

Please check out the Localization section of the following RM 4.0 blog entry:

http://blog.rootsmagic.com/?p=231

[BrianZero]

mellenbach,

Please check out the Localization section of the following RM 4.0 blog entry:

http://blog.rootsmagic.com/?p=231

I would like to see the proper spelling of English words for a start
Now that would ease any translation
The use of so called American English in an International product is not in good taste

As an example - Color instead of Colour

[Laura]

I would like to see the proper spelling of English words for a start
Now that would ease any translation
The use of so called American English in an International product is not in good taste

As an example - Color instead of Colour

Perhaps you should offer to translate RM into British English spelling.

I have a book for my Triumph TR3A in which tire is spelt tyre among other different spellings.  Perhaps the book should have been changed to American spelling before it was sold in the U.S.  

Laura

[Don Newcomb]

I think that translating RM to another language will be a daunting task.  What little I know of the Spanish language and genealogy it would be d**n near impossible. Not only does Spanish not lend itself to the sort of generic sentence creation used in RM; Spanish has a completely different concepts of family relationships.  Spanish has specific names for many relationships where English just adds more "greats". For instance, a great-great-great-grandson is called a "chozno". Spanish has first cousin (primo hermano) and second cousin (primo segundo), etc, just like English but hen you deal with seperations of cousins (e.g. 3rd cousin 2ce removed) they stop being cousins and become either uncles/aunts (tió/tiá) or nieces/nephews (sobrino/sobrina) with a qualification of the common ancestor and degree of seperation. You are an uncle or nephew depending on who holds the senior level in the genealogical chart. So you end up with names like "tío tatarabuelo cuarto" and "sobrino tataranieto cuarto" for what in English is the same relationship. So, the generation of relationship names needs a different program logic or every possible combination must be stored in a huge matrix.  Add to this the fact that Spanish has important family relationships which don't even have names in English, such as "concunado", my brother-in-law's brother, or "consuegro", my child's father-in-law, or even "comadre", my child's godmother.  Top all this off with the fact that RM does not even acknowledge the fact that 95% of Hispanic people have two surnames. I tried to set up the RM4 websearch to use a Spanish search tool for church records.  The test case is "John Doe (1700-1800)". There's no provision for "John Doe Smith" where Doe and Smith have to go into seperate fields in the search string, just as there is no provision for surname 1 & surname 2 in the database.

Bottom line is that while English speaking folks might thing that translating RM into Spanish may be cool; without a major code rewrite, to Hispanics the results will probably just look silly.

[Portuguez]

In July I beg to translate RootsMagic also in the german language. Many other german genealogists have also this wish.
I can't understand, why it is for RootsMagic not possible, to translate this program also in german. Much more other great US-genealogie-progams are obtainable also in german.

Now, I hope, that the version 4 of RootsMagic became multilingual inclusive the german language. Than, I will buy suddenly this famous genealogie-programm

I do not think full imediate RM4 translations to other languages as something very important to start with, as it would take Bruce and his team to overcome lenghty programming difficulties.

But I sincerely trust that while correcting bugs the program improves by allowing everyone privately the ability to change every other phrase or title or sentence to be printed (inside, or as header/footer) in the Reports and Publishing sections: that would be perfectly enough and very pleasant. Before that, in fact, I am not able to publish nothing, as there are not suitable geneology programs in Portuguese for the time beeing.

In Publishing (a gen-book) I believe it would be very simple to allow us individually to change the word "by" /the author name/ to another language, and the same apllies to the "Table of Contents", that for the moment cannot be trasnlated by us, or simple ignored by us: and that ruins all our effort to make a report in Portuguese or any other language.  The same liberty to change or suppress title words, etc. should be freed for us all in the Reports section.

Some things in English we are already able to make disappear taking out the X from it's little square at the options before printing: It seems it would be easy to start to allow the same possiblity everywhere in Reports and Publishing; and on a second step, some time from now, allow every Portuguese and other non-english speakers to re-write every sentence to be published on headers and footers on reports and books.

Finnally, I take this opportunity to say I regret that suffixes and prefixes are not being printed anymore on the RM4's reports, forcing me to use RM3 all the time to have it done.

[avarnes]

Clearly the localization work is taking a bit longer than initially suggested - what is the current ETA for a multilingual version? I, for one, am eagerly awaiting such a version.

[Romer]

What timeframe was initially suggested?  I don't know that I remember it ever being hinted at.

Of course, development into a number of languages is likely, so it's unclear as to which one(s) might be among the first released.  I imagine that the whole translation issue isn't one involving an insignificant timeframe.

[avarnes]

I was thinking of this blog entry, which says "shortly after the release of RM4":
http://blog.rootsmagic.com/?p=231

The final localization will have to depend on significant user contribution, in translation of actual language files. I don't expect RM to give a timeframe for that, just for a version which can be translated.

[Romer]

I think that you may've misinterpreted the context of that statement.

Quote

Shortly after the release of version 4.0, we will be releasing tools to allow the translation of RootsMagic into other languages.  We will provide more information about this then, and will be looking for volunteers interested in helping out with this important project.

It's not shortly after the release of RM4 that any translated versions would be available, but that volunteers solicited and translation tools to begin the translation made available and further information provided.

It wasn't clear to me if you were interested in voluteering.  If so, check here not only for that point, but also for expressing interest in having RM4 being translated to your preferred language:

http://blog.rootsmagic.com/?p=618

[avarnes]

No, I understand completely what it says. The problem is those tools have not been made available yet, since evidently they're still working on multilingual capability in the RM app itself.
When asking when the multilingual version will be released, I certainly don't expect actual translations to appear right away. It's going to be huge bulk of translation work, a lot of which will be challenging due to linguistic and cultural incompatibilities.

The tools themselves aren't the big issue I think. Even for proprietary apps those are commonly just plaintext language files.

I did already volunteer for translation work a while back, that is why I'm watching the progress on this issue.

[c24m48]

Don Newcomb, on 25 April 2009 - 12:33 PM, said:

Not only does Spanish not lend itself to the sort of generic sentence creation used in RM; Spanish has a completely different concepts of family relationships.  Spanish has specific names for many relationships where English just adds more "greats". For instance, a great-great-great-grandson is called a "chozno". Spanish has first cousin (primo hermano) and second cousin (primo segundo), etc, just like English but hen you deal with seperations of cousins (e.g. 3rd cousin 2ce removed) they stop being cousins and become either uncles/aunts (tió/tiá) or nieces/nephews (sobrino/sobrina) with a qualification of the common ancestor and degree of seperation.

If I understand the Spanish system for cousin relationships correctly, it makes more sense than the English system.  With aunt/nephew, aunt/niece, uncle/nephew, and uncle/niece, it's very clear who is in the older generation and who is in the younger generation.  But the same thing is not true with cousin relationships.  For example, who exactly is my first cousin once removed?  It could be either a child of one of my first cousins, or it could be the first cousin of one of my parents.  Indeed, in ordinary (non-genealogical usage), it is my experience that most people don't get this right.  A first cousin once removed is often (incorrectly) called a second cousin.

My favorite example of interesting relationship names in languages other than English is from Norwegian.  (I don't have any Norwegian ancestors, but I lived in Norway for two years.)  The Norwegian words for mother and father are mor and far.  Your maternal grandparents are mormor and morfar, and your paternal grandparents are farmor and farfar.  It actually makes a lot of sense, but it can be confusing for young children.  For example, suppose a couple has a son and daughter, and the son and daughter then marry (not to each other!) and have children.  At a family get together, the children of the son refer to the grandparents as farmor and farfar, and the children of the daughter refer to the exact same grandparents as mormor and morfar.  How confusing is that?

I agree that dealing with relationship words would be a difficulty for things like the relationship calculator.  But it doesn't seem to me that relationship words would be a show stopper for things like narrative reports.  I'm going by memory here, but I think the only relationship words that appear in the standard RM4 sentence templates are son and daughter.  Son and daughter appear when a spouse is being introduced to the narrative, when the spouse is listed as "son of" or "daughter of" as appropriate.

Jerry Bryan

[avarnes]

c24m48, on 06 July 2010 - 06:36 AM, said:

My favorite example of interesting relationship names in languages other than English is from Norwegian.  (I don't have any Norwegian ancestors, but I lived in Norway for two years.)  The Norwegian words for mother and father are mor and far.  Your maternal grandparents are mormor and morfar, and your paternal grandparents are farmor and farfar.  It actually makes a lot of sense, but it can be confusing for young children.  For example, suppose a couple has a son and daughter, and the son and daughter then marry (not to each other!) and have children.  At a family get together, the children of the son refer to the grandparents as farmor and farfar, and the children of the daughter refer to the exact same grandparents as mormor and morfar.  How confusing is that?

I could add to this that my Italian born brother-in-law still cannot wrap his head around those very words, after more than 15 years in Norway and otherwise speaking Norwegian without even an accent. Is "morfar" the mother's father or the father's mother? He simply can't tell, fortunately for him we also use "bestefar" and "bestemor" (equal to grandpa and grandma).

[avarnes]

I reiterate:
Does anyone know when the first multilingual version of RM will be released?

[bienia]

avarnes, on 27 July 2010 - 07:14 AM, said:

I reiterate:
Does anyone know when the first multilingual version of RM will be released?

Only the RootsMagician likely knows, and he has made no indication.

I believe he was looking for people (volunteers?) to help with this project. Translating takes a lot of effort, and there are a lot of things to be considered. It would be best if those fluent in the language were to provide assistance for those things that can only be offered by people who natively use the language.

[avarnes]

Any news on a multilingual version of RM? I fully realize this isn't top priority, since it was announced nearly three years ago but hasn't surfaced yet. Still it would be nice to know if it is ever going to happen.