In this thread a Swiss member, Chaosquo, said he was unable to to fetch new work. He found the problem and said:

I found the error: Under "climateprediction.net-preferences", the second option is in german, and it would translate to: "suspend work on GPU when computer is in use". I checked "no" before, now that I checked "yes", I got new work.
Please look into this issue, afaik this option appeared in the last week or so.

As CPDN has no GPU work I think this preference, whether it says Yes or No, should not affect CPU work fetch.

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I think we have to do a little bit more reseach before reporting this at face value as a bug.

The setting he translated is in the 'Computing preferences' section, not the 'climateprediction.net preferences' section: and it should be set to 'no' (meaning "don't suspend") for best performance.

I think he is mis-reporting the setting in 'climateprediction.net preferences', which is

Use CPU
Enforced by version 6.10+

which is new, and should certainly be set to 'yes': having it set wrong would explain his symptoms better, too.

I reported the bug. It really seems to be a translation error. In other BOINC projects this option is in English and the same as you said (use CPU). But for CPDN it is in german and says what I translated .. And this option functions exactly like it is intended, its just that its description is misleading.

It is a translation error. You can confirm this by switching the language here: http://climateapps2.oucs.ox.ac.uk/cpdnboinc/language_select.php.

I have moved the above posts from here.

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I think there are several errors in the German translation of our accounts.

Computing preferences = Computing-Einstellungen In the first section about processor use:

Item #3 says in English:

Suspend GPU work while computer is in use?

The German says:

Ausführung auf Grafikkarte anhalten wenn der Computer benutzt wird?

This is correct. No problem.


Item #6 says in English:

Suspend work if CPU usage is above .....

The German says:

Ausführung auf Grafikkarte anhalten wenn der Computer benutzt wird?

The German phrase is a copy of the phrase in #3 and means 'Suspend GPU work while computer is in use?'. This is not correct.

I also see a problem with the English phrase. It says 'Suspend work' but it is not clear whether this means 'Suspend CPU work' or 'Suspend GPU work' or 'Suspend CPU and GPU work'.


Item #11

The English says:

On multiprocessors, use at most ....

The German again repeats the same phrase as in item #3. Completely incorrect.


Here is one of the pages of the Boinc generic project translation document:

https://boinc.berkeley.edu/translate/de/boinctrunk/BOINC-Project-Generic.po?translate=1&view=1&pofilename=BOINC-Project-Generic.po&item=120

I can't show you all the relevant pages because it's Tuesday evening in Berkeley and their servers are down for maintenance.


Climateprediction.net preferences

Item #2

In English says: Use CPU (and the default is Yes)

In German says: Ausführung auf Grafikkarte anhalten wenn der Computer benutzt wird?

The German again repeats the phrase used three times in the Computing preferences. Completely incorrect. It should say something like 'CPU / Prozessor benutzen'.

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Do German members including Chaosquo and 3rkko agree with what I said above? Please say whether you agree with my comments on each item.

On the boinc_loc email list, which is for the translators, I can ask for a German volunteer translator and ask the person to change the items we agree about. (And add the items that are not translated yet.)

But I think a new translation will only become active for CPDN when Milo upgrades the Boinc software again. That may be next year. We will probably need to ask Milo to change at least one item in the current German translation. I hope this is possible.

As soon as possible I will look at the translations of these problematic items in Spanish, Catalan, French and Italian to see whether they are correct.

It's very fortunate that Chaosquo identified this problem.

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The same German translation bug hit Einstein, who have also upgraded their server code in the last week. That suggests that the BOINC source file is suspect.

Bernd Machenschalk says he has updated the local Einstein file, and since Einstein has a heavy presence in Germany itself, I hope the Einstein translation would be a pretty reliable reference if we need one!

But if anyone else could proof-read their own language, and report any errors to the translation service, that would be good.

The link to the generic file in my post two above this no longer opens. I think Rom may have deprecated it until the translation is updated.

I've posted about this on the boinc_loc email list.

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It seems that they want to make germans suspend their GPU work, with all those options to stop it ;-)

I think the idea to use the Einstein files (if possible) as long as the Berkeley ones are not in such a good shape isn't a bad one, people say that the Hannover area doesn't have too much of a dialect (even though they do have "regional specialities" too of course)

I've now seen how Bernd has edited Einstein's German translation.

Computing preferences, item #6

English says:

Suspend work if CPU usage is above
0 means no restriction
Enforced by version 6.10.30+

Bernd says:

Ausführung anhalten wenn die CPU Last höher als
ist 0 = keine Einschränkung
Unterstützt ab Version 6.10.30 aufwärts

Computing preferences, item # 11

English says:

On multiprocessors, use at most
Enforced by version 6.1+

Bernd has deleted the German translation. This now appears in English.

Project preferences, item #2

English says:

Use CPU
Enforced by version 6.10+

Bernd says:

Ausführung auf CPU?
Unterstützt ab Version 6.10 aufwärts

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If that's good for Bernd at Einstein it's good for CPDN. I'm going to post in the Boinc upgrade thread to ask Milo to make these changes.

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Use CPU
Enforced by version 6.10+

An odd thing to say, as NOT using the cpu means: "Don't use the computer".

Use CPU
Enforced by version 6.10+

An odd thing to say, as NOT using the cpu means: "Don't use the computer".

It actually means something quite useful in context, but maybe this is one case where the English translation leaves something to be desired!

It makes sense on projects which have GPU applications as well. Then there are matching preferences for 'Use NVidia GPU if available' and/or 'Use ATI GPU if available'.

Of course, even using a GPU application requires some CPU support, but I think there's a useful distinction between using a minimal amount of CPU for administrative support, and using the CPU at 100% for science. Having the control means that I can use a GPU for SETI, but reject SETI's CPU application and run CPDN instead.

Incidentally, the German translation error is generic throughout BOINC - I checked it on AQUA (who use as close to stock BOINC code as they can get away with - very little customising), and it's there too.

In that case, "Use cpu" needs expanding a little.
Send it back to the developers with: "Must try harder." :)

I wonder whether Rom should deprecate this German boinc generic translation file until a volunteer translator puts things right?

I think I'll post the editing instructions for project admins on a Boinc email list. I don't suppose many of them ever look at boinc_loc. Richard, what do you think about boinc_projects?

So far I've never asked for permission to be a Boinc translator and have just proofread translations in a few languages and then told the translators what to change. I never proofread the German files, otherwise I'd have spotted this at once. I hope I don't have to learn how to translate files myself but if there's no response from a German volunteer soon on the boinc_loc list I may have to.

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Incidentally, the German translation error is generic throughout BOINC - I checked it on AQUA (who use as close to stock BOINC code as they can get away with - very little customising), and it's there too.

And if the translation files in SVN trunk are anything to go by BOINC-Project-Generic.po has a translation error for the ATI GPU preference in most languages. fr, it, ko, pt_PT, ru and tk repeat the CPU translation; ca has "CPU ATI" instead of "GPU ATI".

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"The ultimate test of a moral society is the kind of world that it leaves to its children." - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

If you want to reach a wide readership, then yes, boinc_projects: it has more subscribers than _alpha and _dev put together (and the mailman security interface is seriously broken....) (too secure, not insecure).

How many of these errors are mis-translations, and how many are valid messages attached to the wrong pointer - like the first one was? I'm wondering whether it's fair to blame the translators (even by implication), or whether in all the frantic and unplanned shuffling around that's been going on - particularly with regard to GPUs - message IDs have been replicated or recyled and have got out of step with their original meaning.

I don't blame the translator at all. I find it difficult to believe that a translator would have copied the same German phrase again and again for different English phrases. I've no idea what can have caused this accident.

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