more things about Tim

So, CornGuo tagged me back; I will share more thing about me here (or not?):

  1. Shyness: Most people don’t know that I was born shy. I refuse to go on stage and participate team sports before I was 10. Later in my life, I spent a great deal of time to overcome the stage fright, but I never had chance to enjoy the sports thing; that was to late I guess.
  2. Private: Despite strong Internet presence, deep down I am still a private person. There are still things I don’t feel comfortable to talk about even to my closest friends; Not the that I don’t trust them or it’s something embarrassing, I just don’t feel talking about them even it’s something important to me that even I do acknowledge they should know.
  3. Math: I am not good at math, really. Math is the thing about me that echoes what Jeff had said: “The more you hate something, the more it’ll come back to you.” When I went to college, I didn’t know physics is about the ability to see through given mathematical rules that describes nature than “instincts” that I once I thought I have. Even if I switch my career to Computer Science, the theories behind is still heavily rely on mathematics. Math and algebra will save my life, even on Planet Earth it does. But do I really want to be saved?
  4. Aquarius People: I don’t believe in Astrology, yet people born under Aquarius have the ability to see me through. So please tell me ahead if you born under Aquarius before we know each other more, so I can prepare myself. What’d happened between me and Aquariusians? That’s another long long story.

在地化:詞性/文法問題

Seth 是在地化團隊成員,Mozilla 幫助我們處理在地化相關問題,控管相關流程的人。他寫了一篇《Mozilla DTD files, caveat emptor》,解釋了軟體在地化在詞性上遇到的困難。這篇文章有個很驚人的例子:

程式碼裡面有個變數,&brandShortName;,英文的文字是「Firefox」。這個字在英文的拼法不會改變,但是在波蘭文,Firefox 可以被拼成 Firefox、Firefoksa、Firefoksowi、或是 Firefoksem,要怎麼拼要根據句子的文意決定。

在翻譯「隱藏 &brandShortName;」這個選項的時候,波蘭文的翻譯者無法使用文法正確的「Ukryj Firefoksa」,而被迫要翻譯成「Ukryj program &brandShortName;」,等同於「隱藏程式 Firefox」這種聽起來奇怪又像機器人的說法。

當然中文的軟體在地化也有類似的問題。像最近就在煩惱 Bug 473706,關於 Firefox 書籤對話方塊(按網址列的東西會出現的那個)上「刪除書籤」按鈕的事。那個按鈕實際上會刪掉所有網址相同的書籤(可能超過一個),為了警告使用者,以後會改成顯示成「Delete Bookmark」或是「Delete Bookmarks (#)」這樣的文字。問題來了,中文因為不使用複數形,所以不能在「刪除書籤」和「刪除書籤 (共 # 筆)」這兩種文字之間交互切換,只能用其中一種(而且一定要顯示數字,不然使用者不知道有幾筆)

所以要怎麼翻呢?「刪除 1 筆書籤」或是「刪除書籤 (共 1 筆)」都怪怪的。而且書籤的量詞真的是「筆」嗎?還沒遇到這句話之前我還真的沒有想過…

Seven Things about Tim

So the “seven things” stuff finally reach this blog.  Gen Kanai tagged me,  thanks.

The Rules

  • L ink to your original tagger(s) (see above) and list these rules in your post.
  • Share seven facts about yourself in the post.
  • Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs.

7 6 Facts

  1. English: For some reason, I speak a mixture of British and American accent, compare to American English most Taiwanese are taught to speak. I was corrected by teachers at school because they never get used to my A’s (e.g. cast), but my sister always say “your accent is so so American.” I do pride of my accent though, it makes me feel special.
  2. English (cont.): I constantly talk to myself in English; I’d even dreamed in English before (bilingual, to be precise). Nevertheless, my English sounds a lot better than it really is, as I cannot score high in standardized tests due to lack of ability to spell and writing compositions.
  3. Physics: The tagline of this blog, in English, is “Actually, I am someone who studies physics, not someone who build websites.(?)” Looking back, choosing physics as major was really a turning point of my life, but I couldn’t say it was a good or bad thing, for now. However, I could say to young high school kids that physics as major is demanding, and one have to love physics (or science in general) enough to devote that much time, thus being able to say “I’m a physicist” someday.
  4. Astronomy: When I was 2nd grade in high school, I was educational-chair in high school astronomy club, and gave lectures to 60+ people once a week for about an year. I am still able and available to do the same thing again, but there is no audiences anymore.
  5. Stellarium: Starting two years ago, I made a “Chinese language addon” for the F/OSS planetarium software, due to its official installer lacks of proper font and location setting. It had proved to be a quite a success, with 5000+ downloads every year and teachers across the island give out the URL of my website at class, asking students to install the software and feel the motion of the stars right on their screen (planetary and star motions are required materials in high school science and general astronomy). I am glad that my so-called expertise could make such contribution, and being able to stay in the circle of astronomy hobbyists as such role.
  6. The Internet: I’d been making websites from 1997; first set of files still sits inside a floppy of mine (should posted it on the net again and have it indexed by Wayback Machine so it will never be deleted). I own the domain timc.idv.tw since 2000 (check whois), and I paid the registration fee at a bank counter as direct deposit to TWNIC since I didn’t have a bank account to transfer money from. The Internet nowadays is like a big country with highways connecting to each cities, compare to small villages then with few people and little connections. I met some of my best friends in these small villages; we (as a group or graduates of Web 1.0) still get in touch and I cherished that.

I’ll stop here and left one thing untold, so to give a reason for people who I am going to tag an excuse not to post their seven things. Here are the people I would like to tag:

  • RitsuN, st3001, stillive, and anyone being to the Absurdity Land we once coined. These are the “graduates of Web 1.0” I am talking about.
  • Sonax2k, one of my first friends ended up going to the U.S.
  • CornGuo, who always trying to Google bomb me with Web or Javascript related links. Coming from the same high school, we did met on the Internet though.