[www-it-traduzioni] Translation of "General Public License"

[Fabio Pesari]

Good day Dr. Stallman,

I did not reply to your previous email immediately because I wanted to
discuss the matter among Italian speakers first to provide you with a
single, satisfactory and agreed-upon answer, as I know your time is very
precious and misunderstandings only waste it.

I agree with what Andrea and Francesco said. They've been in the group
for quite a while and I think that they would not defend their position
out of pride, mental inflexibility or other nonsense. Of course we're
all humans and we all have our faults but I have reason to believe that
what they're saying is driven by fact, as my own research suggests.

That said, I can see why "Generica" could raise a red flag. And not just
because you are a native English speaker, but because, as a result of
globalization, all languages are starting to be influenced by English,
and some words which might hold a meaning today might hold another tomorrow.

Nonetheless, I'm not writing to advocate for one word or the other, but
rather to join the proposal to leave the name unaltered.

As you can see, from a visual perspective, "General Public License" and
"Licenza Pubblica Generale" don't look that different - each word is at
most two letters apart from its English equivalent and two words trade
places (which does not change meaning, unless you translate "Generale"
as "general officer" and "Pubblica" as "publishes", which is unlikely,
or consider "License" as "licenses" which is as unlikely because of the
singular article that would precede the expression, "la"). In other
words, there are no false friends and an Italian without any knowledge
of English would naively translate "General Public License" as "Licenza
Pubblica Generale" already, making the translation largely redundant.

What about LGPL, then? "Lesser" in Italian cannot be roughly translated
as "Attenuata" (the term we use), as you can see they look different. I
would say that in that case, we could write "Lesser General Public
License (GPL Attenuata)" - simple and clear. AGPL is not a problem.

My point for not translating is that the official, legal name of the
license is GNU General Public License and that should be the name people
refer to. Legally speaking, there's no such thing as a "Licenza Pubblica
Generale" or "Licenza Pubblica Generica". I think it would be good for
people to use its full name, just like they already do with other
software-related terms (or even Free Software-related, such as Free
Software Foundation). Plus, the names of many other licenses are never
translated anyway, why should we make an exception? As Andrea also said,
almost nobody uses the full Italian name anyway.

The license itself is in English and there's no shame in that, software
appeals to people from all over the world and English just happens to be
the lingua franca in the world of technology. I think that the duty of
the translator is to leave the message unaltered and I don't think
translating the name helps in this regard. What's in a name? You
yourself admitted that you do not remember clearly why you choose it,
evidently it's just a name and it's the content which is important. But
then, a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, so I'm not opposed
to translating it either, as long as we can inform you properly about
the nuances of our language.

I just hope I made any sense as I'm unwell, thanks for your time.

Fabio