Is there really a paradigm shift of terms in german core files?

Hello dear leading polyglots of the german language team,

As I can not participate on SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/., (due to hardware restrictions; which some of you know quite a while already and was one of the reasons I gave up my role as german GTEGeneral Translation Editor A General Translation Editor (often referred to as GTE) is a person, who has global access to validate strings on all projects for a specific locale. last year) I would really appreciate a discussion and explanation here in the comments to the following topics. If this doesn’t seem the right place I would suggest a discussion in german on de.wordpress.orgWordPress.org The community site where WordPress code is created and shared by the users. This is where you can download the source code for WordPress core, plugins and themes as well as the central location for community conversations and organization. https://wordpress.org/ started by the people who participated in the decisions and changes.

1) Homepage (engl.) became “Homepage” instead of “Startseite” ?!?

Why did the english word Homepage – in the context of a WordPress Installation – became translated as Homepage as well?
And that in the middle of a release, since it was also translated as “Startseite” since early 4.x versions?

I have suggested the term “Startseite” in the current version 5.5 again and also in 5.6 in the corresponding text stringsString A string is a translatable part of the software. A translation consists of a multitude of localized strings.. I would also suggest that the term is corrected in the glossary and …
More important:
If the current GTE’s decide on a change of this term it would be better (imho) this is done with the new release for version 5.6 in December 2020 and this change would also be announced in the blog posts for the forthcoming release.
Also our dependend language neighbours (switzerland and austria) should be informed asap about such changes because their localesLocale Locale = language version, often a combination of a language code and a region code, for instance es_MX denotes Spanish as it’s used in Mexico. A list of all locales supported by WordPress in https://make.wordpress.org/polyglots/teams/ mainly depend on the german (formal) language files. Oh, and you forgot to adjust it in the starter content.

Another important reason:
The term is used and established in various teaching materials, like books, for beginners.
I checked that with some available books in our library and there are even books that contain an extra chapter/page to explain and clarify the terms and words like Website vs. Webseite vs. Homepage, etc.
(Book Examples: Einstieg in WordPress 5 von P. Müller vom Juli 2019, Kapitel 1; WordPress für Dummies von L. Sabin-Wilson vom Sept. 2020, Kapitel 12, und einige mehr)

As a reminder:
It’s actually quite easy to understand if you know the english originals like:

site => is translated as “Website” (sometimes Site)
page => is translated as “Seite”
post => is translated as “Beitrag”
homepage => is translated as “Startseite” (exception: it points to an expternal, mostly english, homepage/front page of another site)

and if you know the german definition in the german Duden:

=> Website: Gesamtheit der hinter einer Adresse stehenden Seiten im World Wide Web.

=> Homepage: Gesamtheit der Dateien einer Person, Firma oder Institution, die von der Homepage erreichbar sind.
oder: Über das Internet als grafische Darstellung abrufbare Datei, die als Ausgangspunkt zu den angebotenen Information einer Person, Firma oder Institution dient; Leitseite, Startseite.

Unfortunatley the german language has some issues in using the anglicism “Website or Websites (for site and it’s plural form) and uses “Webseite” or “Homepage” instead. And to clarify you better ask if the person means the starting page on the front of a site or the entirety of pages or just a simple, single page.

An exception here might also be a one-page-website.
But since legally compliant websites in Germany have to offer an imprint and privacy information on separate pages, we never really have one-page-sites but at least three-pagers.

2) Give formal coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. translations in pre-release phase more priority

Please try to translate and approve the formal core translations too, as soon as possible!

Or as @zodiac1978 always said to me before I became a GTE some years ago:

“Bitte auch an Formal denken! Danke.”

cc: @jensratzel @presskopp @pixelverbieger @kittmedia @pixolin @la-geek @soean and all the others translation contributors to core and more.

#1 Tipp:
Use the links https://translate.wordpress.org/locale/de/default/wp/ and https://translate.wordpress.org/locale/de/formal/wp/ on two new browser windows side-by-side, not in tabs. This gives you an immediate and better overview and works very well on screens with at least 1920px width.

The current way of contributing to the core files is honestly just creating more chaos and disbalance in the translation files and also a needless inconsistency between the informal and formal translations. The work to get the files synced is unnesessary more load as needed for every contributor. We had this discussion several times and some of you still seem to stay stubborn? I don’t get it, really. Please explain it for all to understand your reasons behind it.

Speaking from my experience I could also give you some (minor?) reasons that speak for that:

  • The german formal translation strings are by it’s nature longer and are so more likely crucial to edge cases, for example concerning the design/layout and so are actually more valuable during the testing phase before a new release.

(BTW People of you who get paid for their translations per word would even get more money and there would be less need to artificially bloat the text.)

  • The by default delivered swiss-german version uses the formal german version as a base.

It is adjusted to the specifics of the language by a script from @openstream.
I only find it polite to acknowledge that and inform the GTEs for the swiss and austrian core files too. (Maybe some of you are living to far north that they are aware of the potential of bringing the german, swiss and austrian files “in tune”?!?)

  • There is also another BIG reason – from a technical point of view, not the number of downloads – to prioritize the formal version, but I will put that in an extra post and will hopefully suggest/contribute that in the next days for the MetaMeta Meta is a term that refers to the inside workings of a group. For us, this is the team that works on internal WordPress sites like WordCamp Central and Make WordPress. Team.

3) New strings containing “user privacy”

There are quite a bunch of new strings containing “user privacy” and I’m really wondering if they actually mean the same like “personal data”.

It was translated as “personenbezogene Daten” and so on [nicht zu verwechseln mit persönlichen Daten, aber in welchem Kontext stehen nun plötzlich “user privacy request” usw.]?

The later came with a lot of strings from the privacy tools starting with versions 4.9 and the GDPR and the new strings sound a bit strange and inconsistent in the generally used wording patterns of WordPress. Also, the current suggested translation do not really sound understandable.

Maybe you could bring up this topic in the weekly polyglots chat and ask some GTEs from other locales and file a ticket for the strings in the privacy tool, if necessary?

Thanks for reading, contributing, discussing and approving.
Stay tuned & Stay healthy