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<section id="best-practices-for-localization">
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<h1>Best Practices for Localization<a class="headerlink" href="#best-practices-for-localization" title="Permalink to this headline">#</a></h1>
|
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<p>These are best practices for application developers to ensure that their
|
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projects can be localized more easily and more efficiently.</p>
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<section id="use-clear-simple-and-consistent-language">
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<h2>Use clear, simple and consistent language<a class="headerlink" href="#use-clear-simple-and-consistent-language" title="Permalink to this headline">#</a></h2>
|
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<p>Using clear, simple and consistent language and terminology is very important.
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Not only does it benefit the users of the American English version of the
|
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software, it also significantly helps the translation process and in the end the
|
||
users of the localized versions. Please remember that the majority of the
|
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translators are not native English speakers. Any questions regarding the
|
||
interpretation of the messages in the software may thus result in accidental
|
||
mistranslations and problems for the end user of the localized version. Even if
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the translator does interpret the message correctly, an ambiguous original
|
||
message will often become even more ambiguous when translated.</p>
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<p>Specifically, never use slang, and avoid using abbreviations. These are usually
|
||
exceptionally hard to translate correctly. As an example of these guidelines,
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||
write “IP number” instead of just “IP” when possible, “character set” instead of
|
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“charset”, “application” instead of “app”, “the folder /foo” instead of just
|
||
“/foo”, “proxy server” instead of just “proxy”, “information” instead of just
|
||
“info”, “database” instead of just “db”, and “application launcher” instead of
|
||
just “launcher” if that’s what you’re referring to.</p>
|
||
<p>Also try to be consistent. Avoid using different terminology or different
|
||
spellings in different places in your software. As an example, avoid to use
|
||
several variants of “e-mail”, “E-Mail”, “email”, and “Email” simultaneously.
|
||
Also try to be consistent with the terminology of other software and especially
|
||
the ones in the same software project, such as other GNOME software if your
|
||
application is a GNOME application. The <a class="reference external" href="https://developer-old.gnome.org/gdp-style-guide/2.32/wordlist.html">GNOME Word List</a> is an useful resource
|
||
when choosing terminology, and its terminology and spelling should be used
|
||
whenever possible. This helps translators a lot, since they can keep translation
|
||
databases small and still have a useful result when translating other
|
||
applications, if a magnitude of different terminology and different spellings of
|
||
the same terminology can be avoided.</p>
|
||
<p>Messages should be written using American English. Please set (potential)
|
||
personal feelings aside and avoid other spellings than the commonly accepted
|
||
American English ones. Specifically, avoid using British English ones, like
|
||
“colour” and “centre”. Use “color” and “center” instead in the original software
|
||
messages. British English spellings can be, and are, provided by British English
|
||
translations instead, and standardizing on one way of spelling words in original
|
||
messages helps the translation effort for all translators.</p>
|
||
</section>
|
||
<section id="use-a-consistent-typographical-style">
|
||
<h2>Use a consistent typographical style<a class="headerlink" href="#use-a-consistent-typographical-style" title="Permalink to this headline">#</a></h2>
|
||
<p>Keep in mind that being consistent when designing messages is not only about
|
||
using consistent writing. It’s also about having a consistent use of white space
|
||
and newlines. Every change in white space or the number of trailing newlines in
|
||
otherwise identical messages means additional messages for the translators to
|
||
translate. For this reason, try to avoid trailing spaces and newlines if
|
||
possible. Also, try to be consistent and don’t use white space before colons,
|
||
question marks, exclamation marks and other punctuation marks.</p>
|
||
<p>Also avoid using tabs inside messages. Tabs are often used for alignment inside
|
||
console text messages, but the amount of spacing the tab character (<code class="docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">\t</span></code>)
|
||
represents is not easily clear from a visual inspection, and it’s difficult to
|
||
get the correct amount of tabs to use in the translated message in order for the
|
||
translated message to align properly, since the translated words or sentence
|
||
often is of a different length than the original. Please replace tabs with
|
||
spaces inside messages (if you have to use spacing inside the message).</p>
|
||
<p>Standardize capitalization in your messages. The GNOME Human Interface
|
||
Guidelines (HIG) has a chapter on <a class="reference external" href="https://developer.gnome.org/hig/guidelines/writing-style.html#capitalization">typography</a>, with guidelines for when to use
|
||
capitalization and when not to.</p>
|
||
</section>
|
||
<section id="avoid-expanding-acronyms">
|
||
<h2>Avoid expanding acronyms<a class="headerlink" href="#avoid-expanding-acronyms" title="Permalink to this headline">#</a></h2>
|
||
<p>For better or for worse, the use of Internet and computers today involves the
|
||
use of many acronyms, such as Tag Image File Format (TIFF), Portable Network
|
||
Graphics (PNG), Internet Relay Chat (IRC), Rich Text Format (RTF), and Plain Old
|
||
Documentation (POD). Naturally, applications also have to deal with these in
|
||
their interface messages.</p>
|
||
<p>These things are often widely known by their acronym, and much less so by their
|
||
fully expanded names. Thus, avoid using the fully expanded names in your
|
||
application’s messages. Use the well-known acronym instead. As an example, if
|
||
your application saves images in the PNG format, then say so, instead of saying
|
||
that it saves images in Portable Network Graphics format.</p>
|
||
<p>This problem becomes even more prominent when dealing with translations. The
|
||
acronyms are used across language barriers. A “PNG” image in English or Spanish
|
||
is still referred to as a “PNG” image in Hindi or Japanese. A Japanese user will
|
||
know the file format by its well-known original “PNG” acronym.</p>
|
||
</section>
|
||
<section id="use-comments">
|
||
<h2>Use comments<a class="headerlink" href="#use-comments" title="Permalink to this headline">#</a></h2>
|
||
<p>Gettext has a nice and very useful feature where any comments in the source code
|
||
that are immediately preceding a message marked for translation, are being
|
||
automatically picked up and displayed as comment in the .po file next to the
|
||
message in question.</p>
|
||
<p>To distinguish developer-related comments from translator-related comments,
|
||
prefix the comment with “Translators”, for instance in a C source file:</p>
|
||
<div class="highlight-c notranslate"><div class="highlight"><pre><span></span><span class="cm">/* Translators: This is a verb, not a noun */</span><span class="w"></span>
|
||
<span class="n">gtk_label_set_label</span><span class="w"> </span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">label</span><span class="p">,</span><span class="w"> </span><span class="n">_</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s">"Profile"</span><span class="p">));</span><span class="w"></span>
|
||
</pre></div>
|
||
</div>
|
||
<p>In a <code class="docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">GtkBuilder</span></code> UI definition file:</p>
|
||
<div class="highlight-xml notranslate"><div class="highlight"><pre><span></span><span class="nt"><property</span> <span class="na">name=</span><span class="s">"label"</span> <span class="na">translatable=</span><span class="s">"yes"</span> <span class="na">comments=</span><span class="s">"Translators: This is a verb, not a noun"</span><span class="nt">></span>Profile<span class="nt"></property></span>
|
||
</pre></div>
|
||
</div>
|
||
<p>In a <code class="docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">GSettings</span></code> schema:</p>
|
||
<div class="highlight-xml notranslate"><div class="highlight"><pre><span></span><span class="cm"><!-- Translators: This is a verb, not a noun --></span>
|
||
<span class="nt"><summary></span>Profile<span class="nt"></summary></span>
|
||
</pre></div>
|
||
</div>
|
||
<p>In a Mallard documentation file:</p>
|
||
<div class="highlight-xml notranslate"><div class="highlight"><pre><span></span><span class="nt"><p</span> <span class="na">xmlns:its=</span><span class="s">"http://www.w3.org/2005/11/its"</span> <span class="na">its:locNote=</span><span class="s">"Translators: Comment about text to translate."</span><span class="nt">></span>Text to translate<span class="nt"></p></span>
|
||
</pre></div>
|
||
</div>
|
||
</section>
|
||
<section id="only-use-valid-utf-8-in-messages">
|
||
<h2>Only use valid UTF-8 in messages<a class="headerlink" href="#only-use-valid-utf-8-in-messages" title="Permalink to this headline">#</a></h2>
|
||
<p>Try to always keep messages marked for translation in the plain 7-bit ASCII or
|
||
in the UTF-8 character sets. Avoid using any other character sets.</p>
|
||
<p>The reason for this is technical. Since the original strings and their
|
||
translations are stored in the same po files, they need to use a common encoding
|
||
for gettext to be able to function when accessing the translation of a
|
||
particular string. Gettext doesn’t do any character set conversion itself when
|
||
accessing a translation. Plain 7-bit ASCII is the only common subset between
|
||
most encodings, and hence it was traditionally the only choice when writing
|
||
translatable application strings.</p>
|
||
<p>Alternatively, you can as of lately also use UTF-8 in the translatable strings
|
||
of your application. Since all GNOME translations are supposed to be encoded in
|
||
UTF-8, this will also solve the need of using a common encoding.</p>
|
||
</section>
|
||
<section id="do-not-mark-empty-strings-for-translation">
|
||
<h2>Do not mark empty strings for translation<a class="headerlink" href="#do-not-mark-empty-strings-for-translation" title="Permalink to this headline">#</a></h2>
|
||
<p>In the po format, the empty string (“”) is reserved and has a special use. It is
|
||
always used as the msgid and key for the po file header, and has the po file
|
||
header as its translation in a po file. As such, marking empty strings for
|
||
translation will not work as expected, as the result returned by the gettext ()
|
||
call will be the entire po file header. The solution is to simply <strong>not</strong> mark
|
||
empty strings for translation.</p>
|
||
</section>
|
||
<section id="do-not-hard-code-line-breaks">
|
||
<h2>Do not hard-code line breaks<a class="headerlink" href="#do-not-hard-code-line-breaks" title="Permalink to this headline">#</a></h2>
|
||
<p>The reasons for this is that making the lines have the appropriate width with
|
||
some variable-width font that is different from the one used when editing is not
|
||
only a difficult task for the developer, it’s also a very difficult task for all
|
||
translators. Also, the danger of line breaks “moving around” when the developer
|
||
changes the hard-coded wrapping (and thus all translations needing updates) is
|
||
eliminated when line breaks are removed.</p>
|
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<div class="toc-tree">
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<ul>
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<li><a class="reference internal" href="#">Best Practices for Localization</a><ul>
|
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<li><a class="reference internal" href="#use-clear-simple-and-consistent-language">Use clear, simple and consistent language</a></li>
|
||
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#use-a-consistent-typographical-style">Use a consistent typographical style</a></li>
|
||
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#avoid-expanding-acronyms">Avoid expanding acronyms</a></li>
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||
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#use-comments">Use comments</a></li>
|
||
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#only-use-valid-utf-8-in-messages">Only use valid UTF-8 in messages</a></li>
|
||
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#do-not-mark-empty-strings-for-translation">Do not mark empty strings for translation</a></li>
|
||
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#do-not-hard-code-line-breaks">Do not hard-code line breaks</a></li>
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