Tldr: Grammar in French - verbs

Created on 17 Oct 2020  ·  4Comments  ·  Source: tldr-pages/tldr

In the French translations, some pages use infinitive verbs while others don't. Example:

ftp.md uses infinitive verbs:

  • Passer au mode de transfert binaire (medias, fichiers compressés, etc) :
  • Transférer plusieurs fichiers sans demander de confirmation pour chaque :
  • Télécharger plusieurs fichiers :

cat.md, doesn't:

  • Affiche le contenu d'un fichier sur la sortie standard :
  • Concatène le contenu de plusieurs fichiers vers le fichier de destination :
  • Ajoute le contenu d'un ficher à la fin du fichier de destination :

Should we agree on a standard format, or does it not make a difference which one is used?


J'ai remarqué que la conjugation des verbes peut varier dans certains fichiers. Par exemple:

Dans ftp.md, on utilise l'infinitif:

  • Passer au mode de transfert binaire (medias, fichiers compressés, etc) :
  • Transférer plusieurs fichiers sans demander de confirmation pour chaque :
  • Télécharger plusieurs fichiers :

Par contre, dans cat.md, on l'utilise pas:

  • Affiche le contenu d'un fichier sur la sortie standard :
  • Concatène le contenu de plusieurs fichiers vers le fichier de destination :
  • Ajoute le contenu d'un ficher à la fin du fichier de destination :

Pensez-vous qu'on devrait s'entendre sur un format standard?

question translation

All 4 comments

Hi @ivorysoap, thanks for asking. I hope it's okay for you if I answer in English. I can mostly understand written French, but I don't speak the language so I definitely cannot write in it. If you know English well enough, I would ask you to please write in English so that the most people (specially the maintainers) can understand.

We definitely prefer present indicative (présent de l'indicatif) for verbs in command descriptions. If you read through the English pages, you'll notice that this is the most common form. Unfortunately not a lot of people speak French here (somebody amongst the contributors to the repo does, but nobody amongst the members of the tldr-pages org), so that's why you might see some inconsistencies here and there.

Feel free to open a PR to correct those verbs changing them from infinitive to present indicative. If you want to contribute additional French translations, you should prefer using present indicative instead of infinitive.

Hi @mebeim, thanks for the quick response, and English is totally fine (I edited my comment to add an English version so others can see too). Sounds good, I'll be sure to use present indicative for future contributions.

I don't speak the language, but thanks for opening an issue. I'd suggest @mentioning some of the other french translation contributors :-)

Closing this as the question has been answered.

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