[Freeciv-Dev] Re: german translation too long (PR#146)

[David Pfitzner <dwp@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, 13 Oct 1999, =?iso-8859-1?Q?David_P=E9rez_Serrada?= 
  <dperez@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

>       I think that this is not a puntual problem, in my translation 
> to Spanish this problem appear a lot of times. The english is a 
> language with a very short word, in other languages the averange 
> words are longer (especially German). 

While the above may be true, I think its worth pointing out
that the English words may not always be short by accident.
Some cases may be the result of deliberately trying to find
a short enough word, or abbreviating where necessary, and
translators should try similarly where appropriate.

(But then I recently read Douglas R. Hofstadter's "Le Ton
beau de Marot", which was a lot about translating (or even
composing) in the presence of constraints regarding form :-)

-- um,monolingual_David