Source

Repositories:

FreeCAD on Crowdin | FreeCAD on Github

Project Details:

• FreeCAD is like a swiss Army knife when it comes to engineering toolkits. Thanks to its open source nature it can be used by anyone to create product designs, mechanical engineering and architecture objects.
• A variety of its features are used today by a wide range of students and teachers. It is capable of delivering 3D real-life objects taking advantage from the parametric modeling feature which can be used to easily modify a design with the possibility to go back in history and change some of its parameters.
• Unlike its direct competitor on the market: AutoCAD, which has an annual subscription of more than a 1000$ which is impossible for normal students in my country to pay. FreeCAD can come to the rescue by providing a complete engineering toolkit for free.
• So, from now on it will be my life mission to provide a proper and accurate translation of this wonderful gift.

Contribution Specifications:

• This is my eighth contribution to the FreeCAD open source project.
• No one can deny that with every contribution submitted, i find myself making a more precise and profesional job. there is just a lot of things and tips to be learned because on the opposite of what i had thought back when i started, translation is not only about giving the equivalent of a word in a target language and move on. No, it is more of an art, an art of providing a close meaning of a phrase written in a foreign language to a local language, and simplifying it to the maximum, because even though sometimes you can translate a word exactly as it should, but it happens that a local speaker doesn't get the meaning behind it. well, in this case we can fairly say that there is a misconception in this translation, and needs to be reconsidered.

In this session:

• As it was advised by our LM @dr-frankenstein, i have taken notes from my work in this contribution as to provide a clear insight of the effort done here:
• One of the new words that i have confronted with in this part is "pocket", this can normally be translated to "جيب" in arabic. but, in english it has a technical side other than being just that small bag that forms part of the clothing. but in arabic, i choose to go with the word "تجويف" as it carry the same meaning, and that's of course after emerging into the details of what a pocket is in FreeCAD.
• There is a string that i was skipping so many times and it is written like this : " can& apos;t make....", i was confused whether it is a typo or it is some kind of code that needs to be included in the target language, so this time i did some digging and i have found that & apos; is the HTML Predefined Character of the apostrophe ('). so since i won't be using the apostrophe in my target language i will just skip it and put the translation "لا يمكن" for that string.
• One of the drawbacks of open source development, is that rarely we will get a final product, that is free from bugs and errors. and this project is a clear example as it contains some language errors that needs to be fixed, like this one. although, this shouldn't be seen as a serious issue, but, there is a commentary a year ago by the project manager where he mentioned that this would be fixed in the next translation update, and still no sign of an adjustment.
• As for our latest discussion @dr-frankenstein, i'm still with the opinion that both words "item" and "element" can have the same translation in Arabic, as i have done the proper research and every time they indicate the same thing : "a thing to be selected by the user, it can be a face,edge,body,.... and it can be subject to some operations, constraints for example". and besides, those strings are written by developers, and not by linguistics and as i have mentioned there are even some language errors in the actual codes.

Languages:

• The FreeCAD project is written in a professional english related to the engineering field. my task during this period is to provide an Arabic translation and i'm capable of that simply because i'm an Arabic native speaker.

Word count:

• Total words count: 31 770 words.
• Total words translated in this part: 727 words.
• Number of untranslated words in this part: 16 words.
• Time frame: from September the 9th to September the 11th : Proof.
• First String translated : Here.
• Last String translated : Here
• General progress: 45%.
• Final count: 711 words.

Proof of Authorship :

CrowdIn project link | My CrowdIn profile link | My activity link

Credits :

• A big hug for the @utopian-io and @davinci.witness teams for making this kind of contributions comes to light.
• A big thanks to the Arabic team for their continuous support and assistance.
• And thanks again for @dr-frankenstein for opening the door for discussion, we are blessed to have someone like you in our team.