From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Mark H Weaver Newsgroups: gmane.lisp.guile.devel,gmane.lisp.guile.user Subject: Re: German translation of R5RS Date: Tue, 29 May 2018 12:08:19 -0400 Message-ID: <87vab6wiks.fsf@netris.org> References: <20180428184817.3jbux62427sfhdjn@floriannotebook> <20180502184924.ypvspfxay3vyj2o3@floriannotebook> <20180512234403.mblakweedxvaow5j@floriannotebook> NNTP-Posting-Host: blaine.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain X-Trace: blaine.gmane.org 1527610068 15705 195.159.176.226 (29 May 2018 16:07:48 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@blaine.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 29 May 2018 16:07:48 +0000 (UTC) User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/25.3 (gnu/linux) Cc: guile-user@gnu.org, guile-devel@gnu.org To: "pelzflorian \(Florian Pelz\)" Original-X-From: guile-devel-bounces+guile-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Tue May 29 18:07:44 2018 Return-path: Envelope-to: guile-devel@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([208.118.235.17]) by blaine.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.84_2) (envelope-from ) id 1fNh9y-0003xw-3t for guile-devel@m.gmane.org; Tue, 29 May 2018 18:07:42 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:33841 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1fNhC3-0003hX-CX for guile-devel@m.gmane.org; Tue, 29 May 2018 12:09:51 -0400 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:39562) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1fNhBs-0003g2-QC for guile-devel@gnu.org; Tue, 29 May 2018 12:09:41 -0400 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1fNhBr-0003ut-L7 for guile-devel@gnu.org; Tue, 29 May 2018 12:09:40 -0400 Original-Received: from world.peace.net ([64.112.178.59]:57576) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS1.0:RSA_AES_256_CBC_SHA1:32) (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1fNhBn-0003rz-11; Tue, 29 May 2018 12:09:35 -0400 Original-Received: from mhw by world.peace.net with esmtpsa (TLS1.2:ECDHE_RSA_AES_256_GCM_SHA384:256) (Exim 4.89) (envelope-from ) id 1fNhBk-00043u-E6; Tue, 29 May 2018 12:09:32 -0400 In-Reply-To: <20180512234403.mblakweedxvaow5j@floriannotebook> (pelzflorian@pelzflorian.de's message of "Sun, 13 May 2018 01:44:03 +0200") X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: GNU/Linux 2.2.x-3.x [generic] [fuzzy] X-Received-From: 64.112.178.59 X-BeenThere: guile-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.21 Precedence: list List-Id: "Developers list for Guile, the GNU extensibility library" List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: guile-devel-bounces+guile-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: "guile-devel" Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.lisp.guile.devel:19530 gmane.lisp.guile.user:14584 Archived-At: Hi Florian, "pelzflorian (Florian Pelz)" writes: > Please accept my patches adding a German language info file for R5RS > and fixing some small errors in English R5RS. I believe the patches > to be reasonably correct. I very much appreciate this enormous amount of work that you've done! My primary concern is that I lack the ability to review this, because I have not (yet?) learned to read German. A large technical specification like this is quite hard to produce without introducing many mistakes. Even when everyone in a standards committee is focused on the same draft document, errors are frequently introduced. Errors in technical specifications can have quite bad consequences over long time frames, because they lead to misunderstandings in the minds of developers, and thus bugs in code, which may persist for a long time. At present, most users who wish to read the R5RS have no choice but to read the original document written in English. On the one hand, this is obviously a barrier and hardship for people who do not know English well, but on the other hand, at least they can be assured that the document they are reading has been widely reviewed by a large number of people over several decades. If we now invite them to read a German translation which has not been reviewed at all (except for the translator), I fear the resulting misunderstandings and buggy code that this might entail. So, I would feel much more comfortable if someone else with good knowledge of Scheme would step forward to carefully review this translation. It need not be someone from the Guile community, which brings me to the next issue: Although we distribute a copy of R5RS with Guile, we do not maintain R5RS, and it is not specific to us. To me, this situation seems somewhat analogous to submitting a large contribution for the Sqlite3 library to the Firefox developers. Firefox distributes a bundled copy of Sqlite3, but they do not maintain that library. However, I admit that this case is far more muddled, because R5RS is an historical document, and there's no longer any group that maintains it as far as I know. Are there any German speakers here with good knowledge of Scheme who would be willing to make a careful review this translation? Mark