Dutch translation issues
Words
Most of the texts on OFF are written in french, and then translated to english (by non-native speakers)?. So any translation to dutch is a second-hand translation. The english translations sometimes have a french feel to it. This implies that often the sentence structure needs to be totally reviewed. And have a look at the original french text might be needed.
Many texts have a technology feel, so care must be taken to translate to something an non-technical person will understand. Always test the translations with a non-technician.
Basic words
Transparancy
The purpose of the activity of the Open Food Facts is have transparency of food and the food chain. The meaning of the translated word transparency, is not clear. So for the moment I opted for another translation. The word inzichtelijkheid is used, which is not translatable to english, but related to insight or understanding.
De goede vertaling van transparency is transparatie. Maar wat transparantie betekent is niet geheel duidelijk voor iedereen. Het woord inzichtelijkheid lijkt beter te zijn.
The Free XXX database
Open Food Facts uses the tag-line ‘’’The Free XXX database’’’. There is a difficulty with the translation of ‘free’’. On CrowdIn this is translated as “costs no money”, which is then linked with the Food-products, cosmetics, etc. So a user might think he can products for nothing. So it is better to separate the two. Also the text collaborative, free and open food database Open Food Facts is used.
Om dat te voorkomen kan een streepje tussen levensmiddelen en database gezet worden. Free kan vertaald te worden als vrij, maar wordt wellicht niet goed begrepen en is gratis beter. Dus dat wordt dan “De gratis levensmiddelen-database”.
Database
To refer to the data of Open Food Facts, usually the word database is used. That has a technical feel to it, maybe another more user friendly word and translation is appropriate.
Category
For all their producten, they use "producten" (AH) https://www.ah.nl/producten The word category is not used by the distributors. AH uses "afdelingen" (plural) for the top-level and "soort" (singular) for the 1st level and "meer assortiment" for the 2nd level.
Jumbo uses "schap" for the first level, and below. The top-level is "boodschappen".
Contributor / Participant / Volunteer / Administrator
Multiple words are used to describe the people involved in the project. They have different roles, which should be reflected in the translations:
- Visitor- someone who looks at product data - Gebruikers;
- Contributor - someone who adds and edit products - Bijdrager;
- Participant - someone who helps improving the systems - Deelnemer;
- Administrator - someone who maintains the systems - Beheerder;
- Volunteer - everyone that helps unpaid - Vrijwilliger;
Sometimes the word citizen or citizen project is used, this not usable in dutch.
Community
The word community is often used to described the all the volunteers and participants. Moment it is translated to gemeenschap.
Data
When talking about the data of Open Food Facts, different translations in dutch should be used, depending what is meant:
- data als over het technische aspect wordt gesproken (json, rdf, api, etc.)
- gegevens als over de teksten op producten gesproken wordt. Meestal is deze vertaling het beste.
- informatie als over de betekenis van de gegevens gesproken wordt.
Nutri-Score
To describe the Nutri-Score system multiple concepts are needed, which need to be translated consistently.
- Nutri-Score - twee woorden met een verbindingsstreepje
- nutritional score - the raw value of the calculation voedingsscore
- score - the resultaat van het Nutri-Score systeem is een beoordeling van de voedingswaarden middels een score of waardering