[Mageia-i18n] German home made problem

[Marianne Lombard]

Le 21/12/2010 20:57, Wolfgang Bornath a écrit :
> In the German team meeting we stumbled over a problem which may not
> apply to many other languages, especially not to English: the
> difference between "you" and "you" :)
> Meaning the way to address the readers of Mageia website, either with
> the friend-to-friend informal "Du" (French "tu") or with the formal
> "Sie" (French "vous").
>
> We looked at Debian as another community project, they are using the
> formal adress on their German website, same with KDE and openSUSE.
>
> My proposal (which reached a 5:2 result in a short poll of 7 meeting
> participants) was:
>
> 1. On the website which is the official presentation of the
> organisation use the formal approach.
> 2. In the wiki, which is the community environment, use the informal approach.
>
> It may sound a small thing for foreigners but it is a question for
> Germans. How does Mageia.org want to be seen from the outside. Pls
> keep in mind that the official website will not be read only by
> community people but also by people who do not belong to communities
> or are not familiar with the informal way.
>
> WDYT?
>
We have the same problem in french.
I have used "vous" for two reasons :
- it's more formal and the distribution want to look professionnal not
made by 3 men in a garage
- the site is not for only one person but many  and "vous" is used for
plural (like "ihr" in german)

I hope it will help you to decide when being formal and when being not

Merry Christmas

Jehane

-- 
Marianne (Jehane) Lombard
Mandriva User - Mageia french translation team 
Inside every fat girl, there is a thin girl waiting to get out (and a lot of chocolate) - Terry Pratchett