Does bear shit in woods^H^H^H^H^HSlovenia?

by Michael S. Kaplan, published on 2007/05/03 22:16 -04:00, original URI: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/michkap/archive/2007/05/03/2403467.aspx

They were looking at the Slovenian LIP, with two identically named menu items on that menu Moishe Lettvin talked about that I mentioned before.

Kind of fun that the word (Mirovanje) was picked for both menu items -- how do they know when the bears are just napping and when they are actually in their caves for the winter?

Just brought a smile to my face thinking about the myriad of reasons that this kind of thing can happen (including the possibility that a language may not commonly make such a distinction!).

This post brought to you by č (U+010d, a.k.a. LATIN SMALL LETTER C WITH CARON)

Actually, Sleep and Hibernation were adequately translated in XP LIP, so this is simply a translator's bug. It was found by the Monitor Magazine's reviewer and was promised to be fixed in the final version.

I think the more likely reasons are "Postponed", "Not Repro" or "Won't Fix". :-)

Just spent half a week in Slovenia, enjoying the delights of Bratislava. Very nice place. Next time I'll get up into the mountains as well.

This is such a nit-picky gripe, but it's always annoyed me how the message you get after you select that second option says "Hibernating..." while it's committing the contents of RAM to disk and before the computer has switched off.

"Hibernating" is roughly equivilent in use to "sleeping", not the process of falling asleep. Thus, a more correct message there would be "Preparing to Hibernate". That it says "Hibernating" gives the impression that the computer can be powered off at that point because hey, the computer's already gone into hibernation because it's hibernating!

I don't lose too much sleep over it, but I figured since you mentioned the Hibernate feature.... :)

I am from Slovenia ....

Direct translation for Sleep is Spanje.

Mirovanje in Slovene means to be still (motion) - but it could be used as translation for Hibernate in computer science.

Official dictionary for Slovene is available on web:

http://bos.zrc-sazu.si/sskj.html

You can also check web transtation (first I found on google):

http://presis.amebis.si/prevajanje/pokazi_prevod.asp?jezik=en

I don’t know what the German localisation of Windows uses, but the bear metapher won’t work either: ‘to sleep’ is ‘schlafen’ (noun: ‘Schlaf’), but ‘to hibernate’ is ‘Winterschlaf halten’ (noun: ‘Winterschlaf’), ‘winterschlafen’ sounds very wrong. (Yes, ‘Winter’ means ‘winter’.) There are at least two states between being awake and being asleep, though, which may be used: ‘ruhen’ (~ ‘to rest’, rather ‘ausruhen’) and ‘dösen’ (‘to doze’, ‘to snooze’, ‘to maunder’). Apple at least chose the former with ‘Ruhezustand’ (‘resting state’).

@Mike: Bratislava is in Slovakia. Capital of Slovenia is Ljubljana.

For more info see "The Eternal Slovenia/Slovakia Mix-Up" at The Glory of Carniola: http://www.carniola.org/category/the-eternal-sloveniaslovakia-mix-up/

oh bum, that's what long term travel does to you. Well I had half a week in both Ljubljana and Bratislava in the last month (with Vienna and Budapest in between). I got to the Tatras (Slovakia) but not the Julian Alps (Slovenia).

Does this blog cover the eternal Austria/Australia mix-up? The pair that Microsoft mixes up all the time? (Bookshelf listed Australia as a wartime ally of Germany, and regularly posts to its Australian subsidiary through the European mailing office. I remember a MS product manager who attended a Photokina event in Germany, and thought she'd "drop in to the Sydney office while she was in the area." LOL

@Mike: No it doesn't. Michael (the writer of The Glory of Carniola) is an American living in Slovenia and writing about Slovenia. Great reading.

We keep getting translators translating "Delete" and "Clear" to the same word. This despite them being on clearly visible side-by-side buttons and doing quite different things. Sigh.

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