Affinity Suite : bugs on French keyboard shortcuts

[Pyanepsion]

Hello,

French keyboard shortcuts are very often buggy. Since the English terms of the menus are often translated in the Google Translate style, it becomes a big obstacle course.
Example: the menu “Text/Text wrap” in Publisher is translated as “Retour à la ligne” (Back to line)! 

There is confusion between combinations with and without the shift key. Here is a reminder of the symbolism used on the keys of the keyboard:

• Bottom left: the direct access key. Example: e.
• Top left: the key combined with the shift key. Example: E.
• Bottom right: the key in combination with the Alt Gr key Example: €.

Please note:

1. Numbers are obtained with the shift key. Example: é + Shift = 2.
2. Lowercase letters a to z are not displayed on the key.
3. There is often a numeric keypad in addition to the alphanumeric keyboard. On this, Numbers ar obtained directly.

Here, in orange, are all the keys that cause problems with Affinity Publisher, Affinity Designer, and Affinity Photo.

[Sean P]

Hi Pyanepsion,

Thanks for letting us know - this is something we're aware of and with development to be investigated. I'll get your comments passed on!

[Pyanepsion]

Hi, Sean P,

Generally speaking, when a software manufacturer wants to have its software translated into French, the mistranslations or misinterpretations encountered generally occur either when the translator is not a native speaker of the final language, or when he is not familiar with the software field, or when he takes the easy way out and does not check machine translations, or when he has not built up a word list to avoid translating a word differently depending on the location.

There are also subtleties, such as the word "espace" which is usually masculine in French, but is feminine in typography, or when words do not exist in English and are replaced by a periphrase ("first line indent" corresponds to "alinéa"), or when the word is much less precise in English ("size" will bring 38 different words in French depending on the context).

As far as keyboard shortcuts are concerned, the best method generally consists on the one hand in avoiding particular letters or symbols (which do not appear in the first 128 ASCII codes) and on the other hand in testing the keyboard with a real physical keyboard.

[Alfred]

2 hours ago, Pyanepsion said:

when the translator is not a native speaker of the translated language

Just to be clear, are you referring to the source language or the destination language? I read ‘the translated language’ as ‘the language being translated from’, but it occurred to me that that may not be what you meant.

[Pyanepsion]

23 hours ago, Alfred said:

Just to be clear, are you referring to the source language or the destination language?

This is another demonstration of the need to use a native speaker of the target language who has a real French keyboard, not an emulation (and who knows and uses the type of software he is translating). It is of course preferable that his keyboard also has the numeric keypad.

Otherwise, to make the problem a little more explicit, see for example the number 8 on the English keyboard. It allows 80% opacity. Combined with the CTRL key, it zooms to the actual size.

On the French alphanumeric keyboard, you have to use the Shift key to get it, otherwise it is the _ key (shortcut badly thought out) which produces a zoom out. On the English keyboard, however, _ is associated with - (the "6" key on the French keypad which produces an opacity of 60%).

In a nutshell! A headache.

[Alfred]

7 minutes ago, Pyanepsion said:

This is another demonstration of the need to use a native speaker of the target language

OK, so you did in fact mean the target/destination language (which is not how I originally interpreted what you wrote). Thanks for clearing that up!

[Pyanepsion]

I am currently testing the Deep translation software. Its database is impressive, and the better it can standardize vocabulary during a long translation, the easier it is to understand.

For example:

• “Run” can be translated as “Exécuter”, “Courir”, “Lancer”, etc.
•  “When” can also be translated as “lorsque”, “quand”, etc.

This avoids seeing a word translated differently, which is currently not the case in the French translation of the Affinity suite, which sometimes leads to a big misunderstanding.

Deep : https://www.deepl.com/translator