新的 Firefox 下載頁面/Firefox download landing page on MozTW

Brief info in English: I’ve just added download landing pages for the MozTW website. It features some links to local resources (in Chinese), and a special tweak to initiate download in IE without having information bar pops up.

Mozilla Taiwan 首頁的 Firefox 下載連結一直都是直接指到 Mozilla Corp. 的下載頁面 (landing page),由該頁啟動實際下載的檔案連結。跟其他下載頁面一樣,它會啟動下載,然後附上一個「如果下載沒有開始請按這裡」的連結…

只是它是用英文寫的。

這當然造成了推廣的麻煩啦,在高雄跟我們偉大的勞工的叔叔阿姨講課推廣網路使用與自由的 Irvin 就遇到學員「回家後就不知道怎麼下載 Firefox」的問題。更慘的是,該頁面為了要避免觸發 IE 的下載警告資訊列,所以不會啟動自動下載,使用者一定要按連結才行。儼然就是你看不懂英文就無法用 IE 抓到 Firefox 中文版,囧。

Mozilla 有和我們要過下載頁面翻譯,但是不知為何他們一直沒放上來,直到現在都決定要更新下載頁面了還是沒放。所以還是得自力救濟囉。

我今天把下載連結換到我們自己的下載頁面,裡面簡單放了一些尋求中文社群支援、協助,一起推廣等等的連結。網址在這裡,但還是建議要指引別人下載 Firefox 的朋友還是指到首頁去(這樣才能順利在 IE 啟動下載,原因容後敘述):

實際的檔案還是會取自他們的負載平均下載系統。希望這樣能為本地使用者帶來 Firefox 應有的網路體驗囉(也希望 Firefox Setup.exe 是他們用 IE 下載的最後一個檔案,哈)。

接下來寫一些在 IE 啟動下載的技術筆記,有興趣的話再繼續看。

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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…