Translating the sunbird slogan "it's about time"

Thorongil · Post by **Thorongil** » December 20th, 2004, 1:28 am

Hello, folks!

As I am currently involved in a rather "fan" german localization of sunbird, I noticed that the "slogan" of sunbird is included in the logo on the about-box.

This is not the case with firefox and thunderbird ("retake the web", "reclaim your inbox", et.al.), so I wondered if the prominent slogan of sunbird should be localized, too?

What is the general policy in mozilla project regarding localizing these slogans?

I would tend to translate it (in fact, for an unofficial localized package I have already done so) with "Es wird Zeit." Which I think comes closest to the meaning of the english version. It means "that a good program like sunbird is over-due, time is ripe for sunbird".

Another one would be "Es ist Zeit." This means, "that now IS the time to use sunbird".

What do you think fits the original meaning of the english slogan better?

Rod Whiteley · Post by **Rod Whiteley** » December 20th, 2004, 3:50 am

I agree. I think it is good to translate the slogan.

The English is a joke because it has a double meaning. One meaning is, as you say, "a good program like Sunbird is overdue...". The other is "it deals with time-related things".

I think the meanings are not very important. It is only important that the slogan is short and a joke, and describes Sunbird in some way. I hope you will be able to think of a short phrase in German that works in these ways, even if it does not translate the literal meaning.

For some more on this subject, see:
http://www.cd.chalmers.se/~jessica/Jabb ... adter.html

Thorongil · Post by **Thorongil** » December 20th, 2004, 4:04 am

Hm, as far as I see, "Es wird Zeit" and "Es ist Zeit" are both at once a literal translation and SOME kind of allegory to "time", but the original "it's about" = "deals with" is not carried over.

lilmatt · Post by **lilmatt** » December 20th, 2004, 10:14 am

Thorongil wrote:I noticed that the "slogan" of sunbird is included in the logo on the about-box. This is not the case with firefox and thunderbird ("retake the web", "reclaim your inbox", et.al.)

I made the about box graphic. Firefox had "the browser, reloaded" in the logo up until the 0.9 or 1.0RC series, when it was removed. I was working from an earlier graphic which also had the SB slogan on it, and using the earlier Firefox logo as a reference as well.

As Sunbird matures, I suspect the slogan will, like FF and TB, disappear from the about box. I don't look forward to keeping a pile of localized pngs updated

-lilmatt

Thorongil · Post by **Thorongil** » December 20th, 2004, 10:29 am

^^

Imagine, you could save them to some layered graphics format and people could change the slogan themselves *ggg*

lilmatt · Post by **lilmatt** » December 20th, 2004, 10:35 am

Or better yet... animate it to crossfade between them all!!!

Thorongil · Post by **Thorongil** » December 20th, 2004, 10:44 am

PNG is lame, you should really consider putting an high-quality rendering in H.264 of 20 minutes!

Sipaq · Post by **Sipaq** » January 3rd, 2005, 10:52 am

Thorongil wrote:Hm, as far as I see, "Es wird Zeit" and "Es ist Zeit" are both at once a literal translation and SOME kind of allegory to "time", but the original "it's about" = "deals with" is not carried over.

Something like "Es ist an der Zeit" would probably be the correct translation and dict.leo.org agrees with me there.

faun · Post by **faun** » January 3rd, 2005, 11:54 am

hmm. the problem is: it's very hard to translate the double meaning, which is quite important for the function of the slogan. btw: how do you want to properly translate "the browser: reloaded" or "taking back your inbox" without losses in the meaning?

well, even german products oftenly use english slogans. so who cares?

Translating the sunbird slogan "it's about time"

Translating the sunbird slogan "it's about time"

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