A user named rajs1942 is practising ‘language extremism’ in translation.
MT of the messages sent by rajs1942:
"Please use the Hindi dictionary for translations. use of foreign words is improper.
i have changed or reverted back some of your translations in antennapod app. please only update if you have a better translation. can contact me if any questions about any of my translations.
Please study the language first. Then help in translation. It is also the work of the translator to create and popularize new words for foreign words. This is how the language grows. Please increase your quality in this. also Please don’t do low level translation.
I’ll keep doing what I can.
Thank you."
According to the person, it is the moral obligation of a translator to make new Hindi words, from Sanskrit, for every popular “foreign” word that exists. The translations the person is proposing are not understandable. I think the person wants to ‘purify Hindi’ by eliminating all foreign words.
Since, I didn’t want to start a editing war, I have posted the messages here. I don’t know what to do.
My opinion would be that AntennaPod’s goal is to be easy to understand, not to grow the Hindi language. We should prefer whatever word is more common and easy to understand, even if it is a “foreign” word.
We do a similar thing in German. The word “Downloads” can be translated as “Heruntergeladene Episoden”, and everyone knows what both variants mean. Still, the English word “Downloads” is more common, so we use that one. If I read it correctly, in your case the “native” Hindi word isn’t even well known. Then I would definitely use the English version.
I agree with the translator that translators in general have a moral responsibility (not obligation) for their language - same for folks working in media & publishing. But, like @ByteHamster, I do think that we (as creators of AntennaPod) need to be pragmatic and make sure our app is easy to use.
Then it’s not so much there about how often a word is used - it’s how many people we think understand it easily. And if a ‘new’ word is nice, short and easy to grasp the meaning of (in our context), then why not.
It doesn’t seem to be easy to grasp in this case. If you copy the two examples above (word “Podcast”) into Google, one has a good number of results, including the Wikipedia page for “Podcast”. The other one has only two results, one of them being this forum thread.
Only native speakers can judge that - you can’t say it based on the number of search results or which websites use it. The new (yet momentarily unpopular) word may be a blend or compound which might be very easily understood.
I have no problem with making new words; I have made many myself in translation (like for alias: नकलीनाम, Fake-name, instead of उपनाम, secondary-name)
The underlying problem that I am pointing is that the words that are being maked are all using Sanskrit. Very few Hindi speakers know Sanskrit; the words make zero sense to an ordinary person like me.
Even simple Farsi and Arabi expressions (which are used widely) for words like ‘request’ and ‘need’ are replaced by their Sanskrit counterpart. Some are also reviewed, so I am unable to change them.
