Re: [Tails-project] #8948: Reconsider the terminology around…

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Author: u
Date:  
To: tails-project
Subject: Re: [Tails-project] #8948: Reconsider the terminology around "persistence"
Hi!

On 30.11.19 12:30, sajolida wrote:
> u:


> I think that each translation team should maintain a translation
> glossary for all these more technical terms. This is not specific to the
> terminology around Persistence and the same applies to MAC spoofing, Tor
> bridges, proxy, privacy, cookies, etc.


I agree.

>> Now, as far as the English term is concerned I feel like "the
>> Persistence" as a nounification of an adjective might also be something
>> which obscures technical understanding, as it's basically branding,
>> like in the examples you gave (Dropbox, Nextcloud). I personally don't
>> like this much, but I'm happy to be convinced that it works. Hence I
>> believe that it would be useful to do user testing using the term in the
>> documentation with native speakers and also people who are not native
>> speakers but want to run Tails in English and then see how many of them
>> understand it, with documentation, without documentation, in any other
>> setting. Is this part of your plan, or do you trust that it will be
>> understandable per se by people who don't know Tails yet for example?
>
> Until now I've tested the future content in English with 5 people who
> were not native English speakers and had diverse English levels:
> 1 Catalan, 2 Chinese, 1 Arabic. Saying "persistent storage" or
> "persistent volume" instead of "Persistence" only would not have made
> any real difference for any of these people. Cody discussed this with
> several people both English and non-English native speakers.
>
> We'll do more tests once we have mockups of the illustrations and I'll
> most likely test it again with non-native English speakers.


I think it would be useful to rethink what meaning we actually want to
convey.

I've had a discussion with Enrico about this and we noted that in moving
from "encrypted persistent storage" to "Persistence", one loses entirely
the notion of a safe place where one can store files, and is left with
only the idea of persistence - as opposed to volatile or amnesic. One
even loses the meaning of the storage here.

So, in order to convey meaning about what this space actually is, Enrico
came up with "locker". Which one could extend to "file locker" for
example. This keeps the meaning of having to use a key to unlock it, and
makes it clear that files can be stored safely there.

macOS calls some encrypted storage "File Vault" [1], ansible calls a
similar place the "vault". Vault means "safe repository".

Synonyms of vault that I found are: strongroom, safe deposit,
depository, repository, treasury.

Synonyms of locker would be (treasure) chest, repository.

I think these words could also inform the illustrations as they are
quite visual.

- ulrike

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FileVault