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English summary:

In German you have two forms of adressing people: Either you say "Sie" (formal) or you say "du" (more informal, this is how you are speaking to friends). Until now the formal "Sie" is used in all translations. I am just wondering if the friendly "du" wouldn't be better...

Posted at 1:18am on June 8, 2006

Lutz, I don't know German so I can't comment on which one would be better, but I did some quick research on which word other web applications are using -- Gmail seems to use "Sie". We'll leave this up to the German speakers to decide. I guess it's tricky because it's difficult to know whether people consider Remember The Milk to be their friend :)

Posted at 12:25pm on June 8, 2006

I think this is just a decission if you want to appear "young and lively" (du) oder more "serious and respectable" (Sie). So its more a question of marketing or corporate identity than of finding the correct translation...

BTW: The translations of "Manage tasks quickly and easily" and "Get reminded, anywhere." are in the informal form (to be formal you have to write the "Sie" in every sentence you adress the person you speak to)! At least we should use the same form every time. In my new translations today I used the formal forms (Sie), because most of the translations are done this way.

Posted at 10:16pm on June 8, 2006

I've found two english sites addressing this topic:

http://german.about.com/library/weekly/aa020998.htm
http://drupal.org/node/11276

But this is a very difficult topic and hard to explain to a non German speaker. I am a German and speak German every day scince nearly 24 years, but even I got only a 90% score in quiz on the first site! In the answer key (http://german.about.com/library/bldusieQZ1K.htm) they are saying you should use "Sie" when "talking to a colleague at work". In my experience at least to colleages of the same team or department you can say "du" (depending on the company). Also to salesmen in shops you might say "du" if they are at the same age. But this is more tipical typical for the "young generation". When (let me say) 40+ years old persons are talking you will hear the "du" not so often.

I would say it's a question how deep you want to feel "in touch" with your users or (as many open source translations do) you could ask the user how he want to be addressed...

Posted at 10:51pm on June 8, 2006

Hmm, I guess as "Sie" has been used throughout the translation, we could continue using that for consistency -- and then we can look at the possibility of allowing the user to choose how they wish to be addressed, as that's a very cool idea.

Posted at 4:41pm on June 9, 2006

OK! I've already started to look trough all phrases and make them formal if it has to be... (Sorry, but my English didn't get better with the the beer I've drunk tonight) ;-)

Posted at 9:51pm on June 9, 2006

Cool, thanks for your help!

Posted at 12:54pm on June 10, 2006

... this is a topic for more languages than german I think ;-)

... as I will use RTM in german I would prefer the informal "du" ...

... an option to change to "Sie" would be cool ...

... in my opinion, even the most formal acting persons like a personal agenda that talks to them with a "du" ;-)

Posted at 6:08pm on July 12, 2006

Another reason why the informal way of addressing the user could be better is because in most cases it is shorter and uses fewer words...

Posted at 8:11pm on July 12, 2006

Lutz, you're absolutely right! The formal version with "Sie" often requires more complex phrases whereas the informal "du" allows for very direct and short ways of addressing the users. So, especially for a website, i would definitely recommend to use "du". But giving the user the opportunity to decide sounds REALLY charming... it's just much more work! ;-)

Posted at 2:41pm on July 13, 2006

It certainly depends on the language.
Du in German is very informal, while its equivalents in Spanish or Dutch could be used without restriction.

Also, I noticed some inconsistency in the French: the site uses "vous", but the welcome message uses "tu", and this sounded really inappropriate (in French, using "tu" for a web site clearly conveys the message "this is a site for teens like yourself" or "you are part of a tight community" (alumni, religious group).

Posted at 12:04pm on August 16, 2006

thierry, if you have some spare time, we would really appreciate it if you could help us with correcting inconsistencies that you notice -- you can send these to us at [old address removed] or correct them through the online translation system. Thanks!

Posted at 1:13pm on August 16, 2006

I've started, but after hitting "submit" the menu is displayed again without the correction being taken into account (nor appearing in the list of my submitted translations, which remains at 0: is it a bug, or should I assume that they are only visible after your validation?

Or maybe again a problem with the firewall, as everything occurs in https:, but hitting submit calls an http: page, and I'm back again in the insecure protocol afterwards?

Posted at 10:25am on August 17, 2006

We manually approve corrections -- I've approved all of yours now :)

Once corrections are approved, they appear on the site the next time we update (usually the next day).

Posted at 10:33am on August 17, 2006

Ok, I'll continue with a few more, before leaving for one week holiday!

Posted at 11:00am on August 17, 2006

Great, thank you! Enjoy your holiday :)

Posted at 12:59pm on August 17, 2006

Quite a few corrections added before leaving - but I don't see them online?

Posted at 8:09pm on August 25, 2006

thierry, sorry for the delay -- all corrections should be online now. Thanks for your help!

Posted at 11:46am on August 26, 2006

Great!
Why not include the FAQ in the translation system now?

Posted at 1:59am on August 28, 2006