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<snip> I have been told several
> times, very emphatically, by the translations manager, that gerunds do not
> really exist in languages other than English, and that this makes them
> inaccurate, difficult, and expensive to translate.
>
> Therefore, we don't use gerunds in our headings. We usually either
> use the infinitive or the imperative (To Set Up... or Set Up... rather
than
> Setting Up...).
>
> I was wondering whether anyone else who translates their
> documentation has run into this problem with translating gerunds, and, if
> so, how you choose to deal with it. <snip end>
Oddly enough I managed a team of translators who translated the
documentation into 9 languages (French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian,
German, Russian, Chinese, Japanese and Arabic) and none of the translators I
worked with had any difficulty with the gerund heading style. I know that
the translation was considered to be of the highest quality because of the
enormous amount of feedback we received from each sales center/customer
base. I'd be interested in finding out if most of your other responses had
difficulites, or if it is something specific to your translation manager.
Please keep me posted.
Barb Einarsen
Technical Writer
GN Nettest -- NOD
905 948 7527
barb -dot- einarsen -at- gnnettest -dot- com
www.gnnettest.com
