I’ve just noticed that in the Greek translation of the project site, they have kept “diaspora*” in its Roman form.
Especially in Greek - the origin of the word “diaspora” - this seems a bit odd.
Should we encourage communities whose language uses a non-Roman alphabet to transliterate “diaspora*” into their alphabet?
(I’ve also noticed “pod” used in other languages, where it would seem better to me to use the word for “[plant] pod” in their language - a separate but related issue.)
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diaspora* is our brand, I don’t think we should change it: it would confuse the users. By the way, they even don’t do the relation in their mind (diaspora is the same word in french, and no friends notice that it comes from that).
The same goes for pod: we can’t translate it everywhere so the user would asking himself “is that the same or a different thing?”. We should keep it.
Even “Coca-Cola” is transliterated into other alphabets!
Fla, you misunderstand me: I’m talking about transliteration, not translation, of the word. The word in Greek is διασπορά, and as that is where the word in French, English etc comes from, it seems odd to have it presented in Greek as diaspora* and not διασπορά*. (With the asterisk it makes it distinctive in any alphabet, just as it does in the Roman alphabet.).
I want to get away from the hegemony of the English language and its Roman alphabet, to that speakers of each language have diaspora*'s interface in their language ‘natively’.
It seems that diaspora* is transliterated into Arabic in that translation, so it’s only some languages which are not transliterating the word into their alphabets.
I think transliteration or not is greatly dependant on specific language, in one language it will be ok to transliterate, in other not. I would let translators decide.
I think that’s a fair point, Maciek, that it should be whatever works best in that language. However, if the translators of some languages are under the (incorrect) impression that they must keep ‘diaspora*’ in Roman characters, we should tell them that they can transliterate it into their alphabet, if they wish - and if that is what we decide.
Here’s ‘Coca Cola’ in a few different alphabets - just to show it can be done without weakening the brand. The name remains the same, and legible to speakers of languages with non-Roman alphabets.
Social network designed for masses. A lot of people. Most people knows only native language - they is our target audience. So all texts should be readable for them. And will be better to use words from their native language which they already knows. I think we should make full translation.
