I’ve repeatedly noticed some language barriers here on the forum, where users are asking questions using literal translations from their native language into English that differ from the proper musical terms. This of course impedes other users’ abilities to offer their assistance in such cases. (EDIT: In fact, as a German native speaker, I set Dorico’s language to English to be able to communicate more efficiently in this forum.)
Is there a comprehensive list of musical terms somewhere online in English, French, German, Spanish, Chinese et c. or even one that includes Dorico-specific terms like flows for example? If not, what about a joint effort of us users to set up such a glossary in a public spreadsheet? What do you think?
I really love the idea of having a tool to translate between the different languages.
I’m also struggling with many of the English terms (also a German native speaker) and therefore stay back in answering questions about notation or other terms. I keep using Dorico in German, otherwise I would need to search too much for many tasks, because of not knowing where to look for.
The “Babylonian confusion” starts in English itself. The Dorico development team resides in the United Kingdom where a German Viertelnote is a crotchet and a German Takt is a bar. On the other hand in the United States the terms are quarter note and measure.
Nevertheless it’s a wonderful idea to have a table of the common musical terms in different languages.
Though, (if this forum has taught me anything) there would be disagreement about which exact words best represent the concepts or are the most common. (Cough, mordent.)
Dorico is sometimes criticised for using “its own terminology” – but apart from “Flows”, everything else is borrowed from DTP standard terms: layout, template/masters, frames, chains, etc; or from traditional music engraving, like “casting off” (also used in hot metal typesetting). There are also borrowings from DAW terms, as well as words used by other notation apps, if not actually music terms.
Daniel has explained many times why flows seemed a better choice than “movement”, or section, song, piece, chunk, or anything else.
It’s possible that translations of the app have use literal parallels, rather than more figurative alternatives or established terms.
Of course, and I definitely do not want to question any terminology here. It’s just that a few terms within the structure of Dorico are not literally translatable between different languages, and it would be helpful where to look for a certain setting for example. I expect the Dorico-specific section of such a spreadsheet to have a rather transparent number of lines compared to the general musical terms section.
