Don't agonize Arthur. As they say,

Traduttore, traditore

or

Traducteur, traître.

Translation, is after all, an estimator, and only at the unreachable limit does its variance vanish.

Alecos Papadopoulos PhD
Athens University of Economics and Business
web: alecospapadopoulos.wordpress.com/
scholar:https://g.co/kgs/BqH2YU

Dear gretl developers/translators/users

 

Here’s my thought : should we expect from gretl translations that the estimation models description/label – at least in the main Menu – be consistent across translations? Let me take as example the basic entry from the Model menu and address this “aesthetic concern” of homogeneousness:

 

English:           Ordinary Least Squares

Italian:             Minimi quadrati ordinary  --same as original but in lowercase

German:          Kleinste Quadrate (OLS)    --(almost?) same as original but English acronym added

Spanish:          Minimos Cuadrados Ordinarios --same as original

Polish:             Klasyczna metoda najmniejszych kwadratow –(almost?) same as original but in lowercase

French:            Moindres Carrés Ordinaires – MCO --same as original but local acronym added

 

I think that a homogeneous presentation would render gretl a more “professional” look but once again, this is a very personal point of view.

 

Always from a personal standpoint, for the French translation that I’m in charge of, I always add a localized acronym if  the method is well documented in the literature and widely used in teaching; otherwise, I keep the English acronym instead. For example, VECM estimation is translated in the french literature (Modèle à Correction d’Erreur) but the original “VECM” acronym is used instead. In such a case I avoid to suggest the translated acronym “MCE” because not only literally no one would relate it to “VECM” but it would also be confusing as “MC...” generally stands for “Least Squares...” methods in French acronyms. Besides, other acronyms that were not so common a couple of years ago like MVIL (for LIML) are now increasingly used and would easily enter gretl.

 

Anyway, sorry for this long message and thank you for reading.

All the best,

Artur

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