Common Translation Problems

Translation in general is the slighting of one language and thought system in order to ‘translate’ it to another one, and in this way sort favoring the language being translated into. There are, naturally, come pros and cons to translation. These can be classified into a number of clear cut categories.

Language problems

• Stylistic differences, such as redundant phrases in a source language, when redundancy is frowned upon in the target language
• Rare jargon
• Neologisms and dialect terms
• Unexplained abbreviations and acronyms
• Slang
• Obscure idioms
• Proper names of people, places, organizations, etc.
• Contrast between languages with respect to punctuation

Problems text source:

• Misspelled or misprinted text
• Changes made to the text during the translation process
• Incomplete text
• Poorly
  
  REXML released
  Version bumpTagged for releaseDon't blow up on empty documents Add a test case for sorted attributes Making the output predictable simplifies unit tests, and doesn't cost much given that most xml element have few attributes Ruby 1.9 revision 14922 is more strict Complete Ticket #134 First installment towards addressing Ticket #134 Fix for ticket 121 Fix for ticket 124 Fix for ticket 128 Fix ticket 133 Ticket 131 (Support Ruby 1.9) Fix for ticket # 127 Fix for ticket 123 Add missing data needed by test case r1433@bean: ser | 2007-10-03 17:02:32 -0400 Missing include for UndefinedNamespaceException was causing errors in some cases. r1428@bean: ser | 2007-10-03 08:37:10 -0400 Fixes ticket:110 r1387@bean: ser | 2007-10-01 22:05:11 -0400 r1332@bean: ser | 2007-07-28 09:15:15 -0400 r1314@bean (orig r1267): ser | 2007-07-28 08:41:05 -0400 Branched for bug fixes r1388@bean: ser | 2007-10-01 22:05:13 -0400 r1333@bean: ser | 2007-07-28 09:15:16 -0400 r1322@bean (orig r1270): ser | 2007-07-28 08:48:55 -0400 r1320@bean (orig r1268): ser | 2007-07-28 08:47:01 -0400 r1318@bean: ser | 2007-07-28 08:42:24 -0400 Fixes a bug in the pretty printer related to an incomplete refactoring. r1389@bean: ser | 2007-10-01 22:05:15 -0400 r1334@bean: ser | 2007-07-28 09:15:17 -0400 r1328@bean (orig r1273): ser | 2007-07-28 09:00:30 -0400 r1309@bean (orig r1263): ser | 2007-07-27 22:51:06 -0400 r1303@bean: ser | 2007-07-27 22:33:00 -0400 Merge code cleanups r1390@bean: ser | 2007-10-01 22:05:16 -0400 r1335@bean: ser | 2007-07-28 09:15:18 -0400 r1329@bean (orig r1274): ser | 2007-07-28 09:00:34 -0400 r1326@bean (orig r1271): ser | 2007-07-28 08:59:48 -0400 r1324@bean: ser | 2007-07-28 08:53:23 -0400 Fixes another bug related to the formatting code refactoring in 3.1.7 r1399@bean: ser | 2007-10-01 22:05:35 -0400 r1375@bean: ser | 2007-10-01 22:01:48 -0400 r1341@bean (orig r12845): ser | 2007-07-25 09:03:38 -0400 Indentation fix. r1400@bean: ser | 2007-10-01 22:05:37 -0400 r1376@bean: ser | 2007-10-01 22:01:50 -0400 r1342@bean (orig r12846): nobu | 2007-07-25 17:18:55 -0400 * lib/rexml/formatters/*.rb: set properties. r1402@bean: ser | 2007-10-01 22:05:40 -0400 r1378@bean: ser | 2007-10-01 22:01:52 -0400 r1358@bean (orig r12883): nobu | 2007-08-06 04:36:31 -0400 * lib/rexml/encodings/{ISO-8859-15,CP-1252}.rb: fixed invalid syntax. r1403@bean: ser | 2007-10-01 22:05:41 -0400 r1379@bean: ser | 2007-10-01 22:02:23 -0400 r1359@bean (orig r13096): nobu | 2007-08-18 02:03:45 -0400 * lib/rexml/rexml.rb: removed doubled constant. r1404@bean: ser | 2007-10-01 22:05:44 -0400 r1380@bean: ser | 2007-10-01 22:02:24 -0400 r1360@bean (orig r13097): nobu | 2007-08-18 02:12:48 -0400 * lib/rexml/rexml.rb: added encoding. r1356@bean: ser | 2007-10-01 20:58:34 -0400 Fix for ticket:115 r1354@bean: ser | 2007-09-13 08:23:09 -0400 Eggbeater missed one. r1352@bean: ser | 2007-07-29 11:33:07 -0400 Implements namespace validation in the baseparser. This means that, as per the XML namespace spec, unbound prefixes generate UndefinedNamespaceException. Also, as per the namespace spec, the 'xml' prefix must be bound to http://www.w3.org/XML/1998/namespace, and the 'xmlns' prefix must not be declared. in the XML. r1350@bean: ser | 2007-07-28 11:32:07 -0400 Adds a test for ticket:94. r1348@bean: ser | 2007-07-28 10:12:22 -0400 Adds a test to confirm that ticket:103 was fixed. r1346@bean: ser | 2007-07-28 10:00:36 -0400 Fixes ticket:102. Fix provided by kevinj -- thanks! Great job. r1344@bean: ser | 2007-07-28 09:37:44 -0400 Fixes ticket:99, and adds Henrik's unit test (with minor modifications) r1325@bean: ser | 2007-07-28 08:55:47 -0400 Adds a unit test for ticket:95, which also exhibits the bug fixed by changeset:1271 r1324@bean: ser | 2007-07-28 08:53:23 -0400 Fixes another bug related to the formatting code refactoring in 3.1.7 r1319@bean: ser | 2007-07-28 08:42:56 -0400 Adds a unit test for ticket:91 that was fixed by the migration to abstracted XML formatters. r1318@bean: ser | 2007-07-28 08:42:24 -0400 Fixes a bug in the pretty printer related to an incomplete refactoring. r1312@bean: ser | 2007-07-28 08:24:33 -0400 Fixes ticket:101 r1306@bean: ser | 2007-07-27 22:37:50 -0400 More merging fixes r1305@bean: ser | 2007-07-27 22:34:29 -0400 r1303@bean: ser | 2007-07-27 22:33:00 -0400 Merge code cleanups r1300@bean: ser | 2007-07-25 08:48:57 -0400 r1298@bean: ser | 2007-07-25 08:40:30 -0400 r1291@bean (orig r12517): ryan | 2007-06-11 20:38:57 -0400 Fixed typo in code. Fixes bug #10420 r1287@bean: ser | 2007-07-24 20:12:25 -0400 Applied patch from Jeff Barczewski. Note that this changes what the values of the name and IDs are from the previous behavior -- the values no longer include the quotes. This is the correct behavior, so I'm leaving it in, but it is not backwards compatible. Also fixes the serializer so that it outputs the doctype in a correct format (needed as a result of this change). Addresses ticket:92. r1285@bean: ser | 2007-07-24 20:02:07 -0400 And THIS goes with the previous two patches. Dammit. r1283@bean: ser | 2007-07-24 19:53:30 -0400 This goes with the previous commit. r1281@bean: ser | 2007-07-24 11:08:48 -0400 Addresses ticket:85 This is a major rewrite of the XML formatting code. The XML writers have all been extracted out of the classes and put into their own class containers. This makes writing parsers easier, and cleaner. There are three formatters, which correspond to the previous three XML writing modes: REXML::Formatters::Default Prints the XML document exactly as it was parsed REXML::Formatters::Pretty Pretty prints the XML document, destroying whitespace in the document REXML::Formatters::Transitive Pretty prints the XML document, preserving whitespace All of the write() functions have been deprecated (some are still used, but these will also go away) except the write() function on Document, which is left for convenience. To pretty print an XML document the canonical way: formatter = REXML::Formatters::Pretty.new( 5 ) # indent by 5 spaces formatter.write( document, output ) r1279@bean: ser | 2007-06-09 23:19:02 -0400 Fixes ticket:89 -- encoding CP-1252 was broken. ISO-8859-15 had the same problem. Also in this patch is a fix to merge.rb (unused, but it should at least contain no errors), and a unit test for ticket:88. This doesn't work yet. * Adds :attribute_quoting to Element#context, allowing users to choose which character to use to quote attribute values. * Adds a REVISION attribute to the REXML object, for better version tracking * Cross-merges some changes from the other branch Documentation cleanup. Ticket:84 Fixes ticket:80 Adds a unit test for ticket:79 A test to confirm that ticket:77 is closed. Cross-ported a fix for ticket:88 from CVS. Addresses ticket:78 NOTE: that this also fixes what is technically another bug in REXML. REXML's XPath parser used to allow exponential notation in numbers. The XPath spec is specific about what a number is, and scientific notation is not included. Therefore, this has been fixed. Put in a test for ticket:75, which I've been unable to duplicate. Fixes ticket:71 Addresses ticket:66 * Fixes ticket:61 (xpath_parser) * Fixes ticket:63 (UTF-16; UNILE decoding was bad) * Cleans up some tests, removing opportunities for test corruption * Improves parsing error messages a little * Adds the ability to override the encoding detection in Source construction * Fixes an edge case in Functions::string, where document nodes weren't correctly converted * Fixes Functions::string() for Element and Document nodes * Fixes some problems in entity handling The changeset 1230:1231 was bad. The default behavior is *not* to use the native REXML encodings by default, but rather to use ICONV by default. Fixes a bug in multiple decodings Two unrelated changes, because subversion is retarded and doesn't do block-level commits: 1) Fixed a typo bug in previous change for ticket:15 2) Fixed namespaces handling in XPath and element. ***** Note that this is an API change!!! ***** Element.namespaces() now returns a hash of namespace mappings which are relevant for that node. Typo fix. Goes with changeset:1227This goes with ticket:68. Dammit. Implements ticket:15, using gwrite's suggestion. This allows Element to be subclassed. Fixes ticket:68. NOTE that this involves an API change! Entity declarations in the doctype now generate events that carry two, not one, arguments. Cross-patch from Ruby CVS; mostly Nabu edits. * Adds a data file for a unit test that got missed * Documentation updates Fixed a really old crusty string from when importing stylesheets from FormsTKticket:21: Improved the error message for missing attribute quotes. There's only so much we can do about this; if there's a missing or mismatched end quote, how would we know? Added a test to confirm ticket:76 has been resolved Added unit test confirming ticket:57 has been fixed. Changes some namespace logic. This is related to ticket:51. If a namespace mapping is provided (during the call to match() or first()), then this overrides the default nodal namespace mapping. Added some unit tests for ticket:51. These will fail. Another bit for ticket:52 Fix for ticket:52, spurious newlines added to comments. Unit tests to confirm ticket:43 fixed Unit tests added to confirm ticket:36 Resolves ticket:70. The root cause of this was the conversion of literals to numbers and back to strings. Unit test for feature request #16. Implements feature request #16. Adds a unit test specifically for ticket:60. Fix for ticket:60, Functions::number not working correctly. The fix was provide by Alex LeDonne, and included an excellent unit test. Alex's fix also fixes an unfiled bug about number() not handling negative numbers.
  
  
  written text (ambiguity or incomprehensibility)
• Obvious inaccuracies in the source text
• Missing references in the text
• Illegible or difficult-to-read text
• The source text contains a translation of a quotation that was originally made in the target language, and the original text is unavailable, making true quoting nearly impossible

Other

• Rhymes, poetic meters, and puns
• Humour
• Highly specific cultural references
• Insider information
• Words commonly known in one culture but unknown by the layperson in another culture.
• Subtle but important properties of language such as dissonance or euphony

Many times common words are a problem for translation because if they have several meanings in the original language it may be very difficult for translators to tell which words should be used in the translated-to language. This, obviously, lend to translation error or ambiguity.

Then there are many ‘untranslatable’ word and sayings in many languages where finding an equivalent in another language is at least difficult if not the target of intense debate as to how best translate the word or phrase in question.


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