what language were OpenOffice manuals originally written in? (using OpenOffice l10n for a research project question)

[Seth Flaxman <sf...@cs.cmu.edu>]

Dear list,

I'm hoping you'll humor an outsider working on a natural language machine
learning question. If there's a more appropriate place to send my question,
I'd be grateful if you'd let me know.

I've been using pairs of sentences from OpenOffice manuals in different
languages (see here: http://opus.lingfil.uu.se/OpenOffice.php and here for
a sample: http://opus.lingfil.uu.se/OpenOffice/de-en_sample.html) and I'm
wondering, were the OpenOffice manuals all originally written in English,
and then translated to other languages? Or might some of the manuals have
been originally written in German (from the StarOffice days?), and then
translated into English? And what is the process now--is English the source
language for translations?

Thanks in advance for your time and a great piece of software, which I use
daily!
Seth

Re: what language were OpenOffice manuals originally written in? (using OpenOffice l10n for a research project question)

[Regina Henschel <rb...@t-online.de>]

Hi Seth,

Seth Flaxman schrieb:
> Dear list,
>
> I'm hoping you'll humor an outsider working on a natural language machine
> learning question. If there's a more appropriate place to send my question,
> I'd be grateful if you'd let me know.

The root of Apache OpenOffice is StarOffice, developed from StarDivision 
in Germany. Some of those developers are still working on Apache 
OpenOffice or LibreOffice. Besides the developer mailing list Andreas 
already mentioned, you can contact them on IRC.

>
> I've been using pairs of sentences from OpenOffice manuals in different
> languages (see here: http://opus.lingfil.uu.se/OpenOffice.php and here for
> a sample: http://opus.lingfil.uu.se/OpenOffice/de-en_sample.html) and I'm
> wondering, were the OpenOffice manuals all originally written in English,
> and then translated to other languages? Or might some of the manuals have
> been originally written in German (from the StarOffice days?), and then
> translated into English? And what is the process now--is English the source
> language for translations?
>

To my knowledge it was this way:

StarOffice had printed manuals and a "online" help, which meant the 
application help, which you get by key F1. Both were written in German. 
You should try to get an old StarOffice 5.1a or 5.2 package for the 
original texts.

When OpenOffice (and StarOffice 6) was released first time, the help got 
reorganized, and then translated from German to English by an external 
service. Then based on this English version the German version was 
build. The effect was, that sometimes the English text was unclear and 
the German text then was wrong, and you need to look into the help of 
StarOffice 5.2 to discover what was meant ;)

 From that time the base language has been English in US variant. Some 
languages (e.g. German) were translated by SUN, others are community 
translated from the beginning. The online help was maintained by Uwe 
Fischer and he can surely tell you internal details. I don't know 
whether he still reads any of the lists here and whether the email 
uwefis@googlemail.com is still valid, but it is worth to try to contact him.

Kind regards
Regina




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Re: what language were OpenOffice manuals originally written in? (using OpenOffice l10n for a research project question)

[Andrea Pescetti <pe...@apache.org>]

On 09/07/2014 Seth Flaxman wrote:
> I'm hoping you'll humor an outsider working on a natural language machine
> learning question. If there's a more appropriate place to send my question,
> I'd be grateful if you'd let me know.

For generic questions the dev list is best, but l10n is OK too in this 
case. Make sure you follow this conversation in the archives if you are 
not subscribed: http://openoffice.apache.org/mailing-lists.html

> I've been using pairs of sentences from OpenOffice manuals in different
> languages (see here: http://opus.lingfil.uu.se/OpenOffice.php and here for
> a sample: http://opus.lingfil.uu.se/OpenOffice/de-en_sample.html) and I'm
> wondering, were the OpenOffice manuals all originally written in English,
> and then translated to other languages?

Interesting stuff. So, "OpenOffice manuals" is a very generic term. If I 
see it correctly from your 35 MBytes file, you focused on what we call 
the "online help" ("online" has another meaning now, so this can make 
things confusing!). The history of that part of OpenOffice goes back to 
the Nineties, so I don't know the exact process. But at the origins it 
was surely written by German native speakers. I don't know if they wrote 
it in German and translated it into English or if they wrote it in 
English (the latter seems more likely, considering how the translation 
process works).

> Or might some of the manuals have
> been originally written in German (from the StarOffice days?), and then
> translated into English?

As I wrote, it's more likely that we had an English version written by 
German native speakers. But it's very, very old stuff.

> And what is the process now--is English the source
> language for translations?

It is. If a new string is added to either code or online help, it is 
added in English. Often by a non-native speaker, even though we may ask 
a native speaker to take a look.

Then it is copied to Pootle where it is translated into other languages. 
Example: https://translate.apache.org/it/aoo40help/

> Thanks in advance for your time and a great piece of software, which I use
> daily!

You are welcome! If you have any more questions, or ideas for 
interesting projects, or time to help, just let us know!

Regards,
   Andrea.

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