[QGIS-Developer] Concerns about translations and QGIS overall credibility

[Alexandre Neto]

Hi,

I have been looking into the Portuguese translations of the GUI and the
Docs, and I got really scared. Many translations were done completely out
of context, making it very hard to read or understand what was
originally written in English, even if you are familiar with the
terminology.

I don't know how other languages are going, and if you face the same
problems. In Portugal, we have a very small community. Because of that,
translation efforts are not really coordinated or even reviewed in most
cases.

Now, the biggest problem is that I think this deeply affects QGIS
credibility. When you install QGIS, it defaults to the machine's locale,
and many users don't even know how to change it (seen it in several
courses). This means that many people will only know the badly translated
version of QGIS in their native language... and It looks bad.

In training, people sometimes make fun of the translations. I always
enforce the idea that the translation work is fully done by volunteers in
their spare time, but I am afraid if for some people it just looks like the
full application was done by volunteers and hobbyists.

So, I wanted to know if more of you face the same issues. If so, would it
be wiser to default the language always to English and let the user find
out how to change to his language if he wants to?

Thanks,

Alexandre Neto

PS: Sorry for the cross-posting
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