Hi
Sorry!! I feel really bad about all that!
Yes. Go ahead.
I did ask the international translators mailing list and there were some
suggestions and discussion but there didn't seem to be any conclusion.
So the international translators have been told there might be many
re-wordings, for a large number of strings, that will significantly improve
the English without affecting the clearly intended meanings of the
strings. Apparently the quality of all the translations is currently FAR
higher than the quality of the English original! This appears to be due to
the long-term lack of resources invested in the English "built-in help".
As i understand it the tiny team of people who do work on it are not normal
native-English speakers and their other commitments within the LibreOffice
project all combine to make it remarkable that the quality is as high as it
is. That quality has made it relatively easy to translate, apparently, but
feedback from normal (is not devs!) English (US, Uk and the rest) people
has largely been that they find it difficult or even impossible to
understand.
Peter, your original suggestion of doing high-quality changes on a string
by string basis would probably be the best way to proceed. Steve's
suggestion of using search&replace to get the whole lot done up to a medium
quality all in one go very quickly, and then going back individual strings
to bring them all up to your higher-quality later is probably best
abandoned even though that was the suggestion i was pushing for.
Many, many thanks for taking my advice to heart and holding off for so
long, and for still being willing to do the improvements!! :))
Also, many apologies for my failure to respond any sooner!
Regards, thanks and good luck from
Tom