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Dutch translation issues

From Open Food Facts wiki

Can be deleted

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 a non-technical person will understand. Always test the translations with a non-technician.

Open Food Facts

The brand/server/database stays untranslated, but if needed you can use Open Voedsel Feiten.

The database contains food products, which turns out to be a bit hard to translate.

Personally, I use the word: levensmiddel.

Although, Wikipedia uses "voedingsmiddel". (and not voedingsproduct) and it seems that the word "levensmiddel" is bigger and more seen in the context of a primary need to live. The discussion even suggests to delete the whole page about this, because it might be incorrect.

Basic words

  • nutrition facts tables = voedingswaardetabel (officially: voedingswaardedeclaratie)
  • nutrient = voedingsstof
  • opening food products = levensmiddelen bevrijden (not very well translated...)

Transparency

The purpose of Open Food Facts is to create transparency of food and the whole 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".

The correct translation of the word "transparency" is "transparantie". But the meaning of that word is not so clear, so therefore "inzichtelijkheid" is used right now.

The Free XXX database

Open Food Facts uses the tag-line ‘’’The Free XXX database’’’. There is a difficulty with the translation of the word ‘free’’. On Crowdin this word is translated as “costs no money”, which is then linked with the Food-products, cosmetics, etc. So a user might think he/she can buy 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.

To prevent that a line appears between "levensmiddelen" and "database", "Free" can be translated as "vrij", but this might create misunderstanding, so "gratis" is better to use. So we use: “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 in some cases.

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, but can be linked to "burgerwetenschap".

Community

The word "community" is often used to described the all the volunteers and participants. At this moment it is translated as "gemeenschap".

Data

When talking about the data of Open Food Facts, different translations in Dutch should be used, depending what is meant:

  • "data" if it's about the technical aspects (for example: json, rdf, api, etc.).
  • "gegevens" if it's about the written information you can find on a product.
  • "informatie" if the meaning of the information written on a product is discussed.

Nutri-Score

To describe the Nutri-Score system, multiple concepts are needed, which need to be translated consistently.

  • "Nutri-Score" in two words, with "-". This is a score that a product can get.
  • "voedingsscore" Is the translation of "nutritional score" and is the raw data according to certain formulas.

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