Ubuntu
system-cleaner package

The definition and translation of cruft

Asked by Mads Lundby

To the developers

In the Danish Translation Team, we have had a lenghty discussion whether or not to translate the term "cruft".

Some have suggested translations like "dirt", "junk", "dust", "superfluous/unnecessary files" etc.

Some have suggested, that since the etymology that can be traced back to equipment piling up in and outside a building at Harvard Uni called Cruft Hall, the term should be left untranslated.

The definition in System Cleaner:
"Cruft is anything that shouldn't be on the system, but is. Stretching the definition, it is also things that should be on the system, but aren't."

Is your definition a tailored, pragmatic one or does it reflect the common understanding of the term "cruft"? Specifically, I'm puzzled by the "stretching" of the definition.

How would you suggest taht we translate "cruft"?

To me the term seems "anglocentric" and very hard to translate, since it's "slang"-ish nature doesn't translate very well to other languages (anyway... cruft isn't used in everyday Danish techie language and doesn't sound good in Danish either).

I'm looking forward to your reply.

\Mads

PS: I've noticed that the term is not translated in German and Swedish. However, I don't know their argumentation (if any).

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Andy Ferguson
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Best Andy Ferguson (teknostatik) said : 		#1

I'd be thinking about leaving it as it is. The current description of system-cleaner states:

"system-cleaner finds and removes cruft from a system. Cruft is (currently) packages that apt marks as automatically removable, or that Ubuntu no longer supports."

It uses the word, and then defines it, so I'd be thinking about leaving the word itself in English and then translating the rest into Danish. Most English people don't use the word either (at least I've not heard it used outside discussions regarding this package).

Regards,

Andy

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Mads Lundby (lundbymads-gmail) said : 		#2

Thanks Andy Ferguson, that solved my question.

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Ask Hjorth Larsen (askhl) said : 		#3

As one of the previously mentioned Danish translators suggesting the use of a translation (as well as being a chronic nitpicker), I think it would be much more natural to use a translation of the term throughout the program, with the possible exception that the English term is mentioned in the defining sentence, possibly parenthesized like "(English: cruft)".

The thing is that the word cruft is used several times in the program (10 according to my grep), and we wouldn't want these foreign words all over the interface when translated words will do equally well -- more so in languages having different alphabets.

But now we're making a larger fuss out of this than what is probably necessary - as I said, I am a chronic nitpicker.

Best regards
Ask Hjorth Larsen

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Almufadado (almufadado) said : 		#4

This is a slang expression

cruft = junk, extra stuff that gets in the way and is unnecessary

So get a danish slang word for it or use it's direct meaning !