Before I make the extension public...

There are a few things that I should do before I make the Tagalog language pack public.

• Take some time off
  
  I've been looking over the translations so long that they make sense. What I mean to say is that I need some time away from them so that I can take a look at them will a fresh set of eyes. Of course, I'll have a link for people to make comments or report bugs, but the last thing that I want to address is an influx of the same issues again and again. So, that brings me to the next thing.



• A web page
  
  A page where I can put the language pack and show others how to install the language pack or how they should contact me if they would like to see a change.



• Another look over the text
  
  Although the translations are pretty much what I've decided to use, the next issue, aside from the terms themselves is SYNTAX. Let's face it, if you don't know what a term is, you can discern its meaning simply from it's context... or at least infer its meaning. That requires good syntax. Tagalog and other Filipino languages have a PREDICATE-TOPIC structure, or, rather VERB-SUBJECT-OBJECT word order. That poses some issues and so, some sentences that follow this with apposition (NOT opposition), the sentence becomes lop-sided. Tagalog has ways to "break" away from this rigid order, so some of the long sentences will have to be re-edited. Then, after release I can come back later and make further changes.



• Prepare for version 1.5.x
  
  The Mozilla Foundation has version 1.5 beta 2 out. I've looked at how the text is layed out and it's different from 1.0.7! No matter. It will just be a matter of moving text around. The issue will just be the amount of text which is ALL of it.
  



• Update tools
  
  I've metioned that Mozilla Translator (the link is broken unfortunately) is "usable" but there is a lot of "massaging" and manual things that need to be done to produce an XPI. If you don't know what you're doing (like I was before I found out that it's broken), it can be very frustrating. So, I created my own tool.
  
  
  That's the issue with my tool, however. I know that it's not perfect, but I know about it's pitfalls. If I gave it to someone else to use, then I'd have to support it, of course. At this time though, I'm revamping it's design and it's overall functionality because I've added features to it as I was localizing Firefox and trying it out with the Mozilla Suite. In essence, I hacked my own tool and I haven't tested it enough to know if it's usable for others. In addition, I'd like to write a help file to ship with it to lessen the impact of supporting it.
  



• Enlist help from others
  
  So, far the help that I'm getting is from posting on the various groups that I am a member of, such as Alibata, Wika and GMail-Phils. But, it would probably be easier if the work were to be split up into subsections, divide the labor. Then I would only have to act as management and editing.
  

Syntax

Syntax is basically the way that words are strung together in order to make some sense. Without the right syntax, you don't have a syntactically correct sentence. Every language has it. Adjectives must come before nouns; Subjects come before verbs, etc...

One of the things that I learned from localizing Firefox into Tagalog is that some of the books out there just don't cover complex sentences. I have a copy of Modern Tagalog: Grammatical Explanations and Exercises for Non-Native Speakers by Teresita V. Ramos and Resty M. Cena. It does a good job in covering various areas of Tagalog syntax. It also gets into topics such as apposition and sentence conjoining. But, the one thing that it seems to lack is translations of some of the sentences, especially when they talk about using Gerundives, or Pag- constructions. In adition, a section of how to modify verbs is not very well explained. For example, they say that only a set number of adjectives can modify verbs. I have found that not to be the case in some instances, but none that come to mind. One area that it doesn't cover can be exemplefied with a sentence similar to many that I've found in Firefox: Firefox has blocked this site from opening popups.

In this sentence there are two verbs and two subjects. The first verb and subject tandem affect the object and second subject, site by blocking it from doing something, opening popups. That is what's going on in a nutshell... I could get into the intricacies of this syntax, but 1) that would be too much to make my point because it would require a lot of linguistic jargon and 2) I've forgotten some of the terms and reasoning.

After asking around on the Net. I received a transalation that showed the syntax of the example sentence in Tagalog:
Hinadlangan ng Firefox na makabukas ang lugar na ito ng sumusulpot na bintana.¹
Or,
Hinadlangang ng Firefox ang lugar na ito sa pagbukas ng sumusulpot na bintana.²

In sentence 1, the formula is:
VERB₁ ng ACTOR₁ na VERB₂ ang ACTOR₂

In sentence 2, the formula is:
VERB₁ ng ACTOR₁ ang GOAL/ACTOR₂ na VERB₂

According to my sources, sentence one is where the sense is that the site was stopped at that moment. But, in sentence 2, the Site was stopped and will no longer be able to try that again.

Choice of Terms

I've been participating in a lot of conversations with Tagalog speakers about what to localize and what not to.

One camp says to keep words that speakers are "comfortable" with, such as file, user, access, etc. OK. But, some of these words exist in some form in the Tagalog language or can be coined. For example, from the root gamit "use/usage", one can derived Tagagamit. In fact I've seen this used on the Tagalog version of Google.

If the term is kept, however, the problem is which spelling to use. Keep the English spelling, or tranliterate the word into a phonetically Tagalog version? For example, using "access" above, it was pointed out that Tagalog speakers tend to get confused with the readings of letters like C which has a different reading depending on context or word (it all depends on your point of view regarding English orthography). So, access, might be akses and block, blok. Also, because of Spanish influence, or because Tagalog tends toward a CV(C) syllabic typology, the phonetic combination of /#sk_/ is not tolerated, so English words that begin with this troublesome sequence is preceded with a epenthetic /#i_/ i- or e-, e.g. "screen" could be either eskrin or iskrin, both I would imagine would be pronounced /is.kri:n/.

So, I've decided to try to keep the translation as Tagalog as possible. The only foreign words are those that have been assimilated early enough that they have a Tagalog spelling. These words are primarily those words that came into the language via other languages other than English, such as Hokkien Chinese (susi), Arabic (alak), Sanskrit (basa) or Spanish (sertipiko) or earlier English borrowings.

I still have to take a look at the translations, though before I let anyone else take a look. First of all, because of the syntax and diction used. Second, the terms used for translating the original English term.

Some of the terms that I'm having problems with are the following:

• Encrypt/Encryption
• Cipher
• Encode/Decode
• Object
• Entity
• Configure/Configuration
• Profile
• Parameter
• Argument
• Method
• Mode
• String
• Setting(s)
  

It's a very short list, but strings containing these terms are numerous. And, it's just off the top of my head.

I'll take a look at the translations and run them by friends and family. I think that some of the terms might as well remain in English, but with the spelling kept.