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Infinitive or command form

de Oŝo-Jabe, 2009-septembro-25

Mesaĝoj: 35

Lingvo: English

horsto (Montri la profilon) 2009-septembro-26 22:00:07

Momomomomo:
Meh, I think we english speakers are just too lazy to put "to" on the font of everything
No, I don't think so. For me it's clear that, no matter if you select something in a menu, or if you press a button in a graphical user interface or if you enter a command on the command line of a Linux (Unix) system, you always give an order to your computer, and therefore an imperative form perfectly suits.

Oŝo-Jabe (Montri la profilon) 2009-septembro-26 22:23:14

What about role-playing game menus? Would the button say "mortigi drakon" or "mortigu drakon" if the character is supposed to be you?

tommjames (Montri la profilon) 2009-septembro-26 23:01:57

Oŝo-Jabe:What about role-playing game menus? Would the button say "mortigi drakon" or "mortigu drakon" if the character is supposed to be you?
I don't think all buttons are necessarily like giving a command to the computer, and what you mention here is a good example of it, and of why I'm not a fan of the imperative form.. it's too strong and in some cases, like this one, can be counter intuitive. A lot of times you won't want to give a command to the computer to do something, you just want to indicate that it is your desired action. In such a case "mortigu" makes little sense since it's me doing the killing, not the computer. Unless of course you think you're telling yourself to do it ridulo.gif

IMHO the best solution is the one that is most neutral, applicable to all situations, and for me that is the infinitive. I can certainly see the logic in the imperative form but there's just something I find slightly too "overdone" about it. I guess you could argue for imperative forms when it makes sense and infinitive forms when it doesn't, but personally I think it's more elegant just to have one form across the board.

Rogir (Montri la profilon) 2009-septembro-27 00:29:10

In Dutch we usually use the infinitive, except for pushy marketing links.

yugary (Montri la profilon) 2009-septembro-27 08:09:37

ceigered:The -u form to me is more like commanding and telling the user what to do, therefore if you have two buttons (let's say, 'delete' and 'save' (forigi and savi if I'm correct?)) . . .
Actually, 'savi' means 'save' in the sense of 'rescue' or 'deliver from danger' and the like. For your purpose, it would probably be best to use 'konservi' or 'surdiskigi' or even the more general 'registri' (meaning 'record' in the sense of 'entering something into a retrievable record--i.e., a book, a list, a database, an audio recording, a video, and so on).

'Forigi' seems fine for 'delete', but I notice that some programs use 'forviŝi'.

Matthieu (Montri la profilon) 2009-septembro-27 08:25:27

I've got the English-Esperanto dictionary Komputeko, and they say:
Infinitivo/imperativo

La tradukteamo de OpenOffice.org uzas la jenan regulon pri uzado de imperativo en surekranaj tekstoj kaj menueroj: oni uzas ĝin kiam temas pri instrukcio al la uzanto, ekz. “Entajpu vian pasvorton” aŭ “Elektu el la ĉi suba listo”. Krom tio, oni uzu i-formojn: “Konservi dosieron”, “Kopii tekston”, k.s.
I think we use similar rules in French.

ceigered (Montri la profilon) 2009-septembro-27 13:59:57

yugary:
ceigered:The -u form to me is more like commanding and telling the user what to do, therefore if you have two buttons (let's say, 'delete' and 'save' (forigi and savi if I'm correct?)) . . .
Actually, 'savi' means 'save' in the sense of 'rescue' or 'deliver from danger' and the like. For your purpose, it would probably be best to use 'konservi' or 'surdiskigi' or even the more general 'registri' (meaning 'record' in the sense of 'entering something into a retrievable record--i.e., a book, a list, a database, an audio recording, a video, and so on).

'Forigi' seems fine for 'delete', but I notice that some programs use 'forviŝi'.
Cheers Yugary for the corrections ridulo.gif - having the word 'save' in English being used for storing data really makes things confusing lango.gif

Oŝo-Jabe (Montri la profilon) 2009-septembro-27 17:33:34

I've seen "stoki" used for save, but I don't know how good the language in the program was.

Rogir (Montri la profilon) 2009-septembro-27 17:49:15

I have seen konservi used most often, I recommend it.

Ironchef (Montri la profilon) 2009-septembro-30 20:30:51

As an aside, if memory serves me right, I believe computer terminology uses English words like LOAD and SAVE because back in the early days, command-line processing required keywords (commands) to be no more than 8 characters long (they were often programs in their own right with short file names) and these conventions just endured.

ridulo.gif

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