Österreichisches Deutsch - Translation (de_at) completely shocking unserious #3918

I just checked out the new 0.9 release and started it and i was really wondering why i see the most strangest dialect/slang in my bitcoin client. At first I thought i downloaded a fake version of bitcoin or a compromised one, until I found out that the default language was switched to DE_AT - which was obviously build only as slang/dialect language.

After switching to DE it looks ok, but i was really shocked that I see such a nonsense-language (completely only slang) in my bitcoin wallet - AS DEFAULT. A place where i don't want to see any funny things!!!! There are much better places to see funny things than in the bitcoin wallet. This is absolutely not acceptable from my point of view.

Imagine that I want to show this to some other people, which dont know bitcoin - they will for sure think i want to make a joke about them. I can understand that it is maybe funny - for some 15 year old teenagers. But for introducing bitcoin as a mature payment service - this is a absolutely no go - specially when the DEFAULT language is adjusted to this dialect speech.

Anyone agrees with me?

Bitcoin is developed as an open source project. Anyone can contribute. Some contribute core code, some contribute translations and localisations. If you don't like what the Austrian localisation says, please feel free to go ahead and change it.

How many people do you think choose DE_AT as their default language? My guess would be that you're probably the second. BUT, it still deserves a proper translation - please be the person to provide it.

Sorry, but i think you missunderstood me.

I think most people in Austria will have their default language setted to de_at, so probably ~ 9 mio people. I didn't set it manually and in the last bitcoin version everything looked normal. I didnt change any locale settings, neither in my bitcoin client nor in my operating system! I just downloaded the new version and started it - without changing anything.

Sure, I will try to work on it, but first i wanted to check if there is a missunderstanding from my side on how the bitcoin interface language should appear to the community.

Translations are done here: https://www.transifex.com/projects/p/bitcoin/

Are you saying that the de_at translation present is a dialect that would not be reasonably considered "generic austrian german" by most native speakers?

If so, that translation should probably be considered bogus.

Yes, thats exactly what I mean. de_at (austrian german) is a normal serious language (quite similar to normal german, but with sometimes diferent words), but the translation form transifex is completly joke/deep slang. It's not a dialect, it's just like spoken slang (like "jeez" instead of "jesus")...

You could compare it to en_us and en_uk, e.g. like if you would translate the en_uk "OK/Cancel" buttons to "OK dude!"/"Jeez, sod off!". This example looks us english (i think at least, sorry its not my mother language), but totally slang and therefore I see the de_at translation as completely unappropriate.

I don't say anything against fun/joke translations like "pirate" etc.. But not as a serious translation for 9 mio normal people, which just have set their OS language to de_at, just because they live in austria. I was really scared when i started 0.9 the first time, because I thought there is something criminal (virus, manipulated binary,...) happening. @cs, @musha68k can you confirm this maybe?

This was bound to happen one time. We need more people checking the translations in transifex.

When this is fixed (the weird translation removed and/or updated) please let me know so we can pull the new translations into git.

Yes, I can confirm - this is pretty bad. Not good for bitcoin if stuff like this goes through, thanks for bringing this up @lichtamberg

I have to go to work now, but from my current point of view, there are 3 options:

1. Remove de_at and set "de" as default translation for people with "de_at" locale setting in OS Would be quite ok, "de" was ok before 0.9 and im not even sure if there (in this limited payment context) is even any difference in a serious translation between "de" and "de_at" (in this bitcoin context).

2. Replace "de_at" with "de" Like I said this would be ok, but then the "Österreischisches Deutsch" select option in the dropdown box is useless - since its the same translation.

3. I will add the correct translation (which probably wont be different to normal de), but this will take some time - as I mentioned i have to work now and some other people should confirm my translations too.

I would suggest to do 1) and remove the de_at translation, the difference between de and de_at are really small and people from austria understand "de" completely. I think the difference between en_us and en_uk are much bigger than de and de_at.

The difference amounts to not much more than that between American and Canadian English so for now it's definitely OK to go with "de".

Note that de is the default translation for German, so any messages missing from de_at will fall back to that. So if you don't like a message in this translation you could remove it, instead of translating it in the same way.

So maybe removing it is best. I'm not sure how that can be done though, if I just remove it from git it will come back with the next sync. Maybe one of the project maintainers on transifex can help?

Note that de is the default translation for German, so any messages missing from de_at will fall back to that. So if you don't like a message in this translation you could remove it, instead of translating it in the same way.

Are you sure? In my example pictures on the top, you can see that there are the words "Available" and "Pending", so I think the fallback is "en", not "de"... please correct me if I'm wrong?

Well there is this logic: https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/blob/master/src/qt/bitcoin.cpp#L105

So ordering should be,

• bitcoin_de.qm is read
• bitcoin_de_AT.qm is read

Hm.. I dont know, i checked it again and made another screenshot of the preferences window:

Maybe the de file is not completely translated? Im now offline for the next hours..

The de translation is maintained by me and it is up to date currently on Transifex. Perhaps it's just missing that string, because your version was build before the translation was finalized :).

Oh ok, no problem, just asked out of interest - thanks for your great work!

Shall we translate now de_at or will it be removed, since there won't be any difference?