Re: [PATCH] Split long strings into paragraphs to ease translation

6 mars 2018 kl. 23.38 skrev Branko Čibej <brane_at_apache.org>:
>
> I have trouble understanding this approach. It forces translators to use
> the same paragraph structure as the original text. This may not make any
> sense for the target language.

Yes, I too had similar concerns when I first came across it, but it has worked out all right in practice and I have not heard any other translators complaining. One reason may be that paragraphs aren't really syntactical constructs but units of ideas, concepts and statements, which comprise higher levels than individual sentences. In contrast, a translator has little respect for the integrity of sentences in the original text.

The gettext manual recommends:

  Translatable strings should be limited to one paragraph; don’t let a single
  message be longer than ten lines. The reason is that when the translatable
  string changes, the translator is faced with the task of updating the entire
  translated string. Maybe only a single word will have changed in the English
  string, but the translator doesn’t see that (with the current translation
  tools), therefore she has to proofread the entire message.
Received on 2018-03-07 16:35:22 CET