Using markup in localizations

[Eduardo Trápani]

Hi,

Is it possible to use markup when localizing?

I've run into sentences like this:

<!ENTITY doNotTrackCheckbox2.label "Always apply Do Not Track">

"Do Not Track" is capitalized, and that sets it apart. It works
perfectly in English.

But uppercase in the middle of a sentence looks a bit weird in
Esperanto, and also in Spanish. Capitalization of each word is even
worse. To set "do not track" apart somehow localizers have some options.
For example:

manage your Do Not Track settings (en-US)

instellings vir “Moenie volg nie” (af)
administrar las opciones de rastreo (es-AR)
gérer les paramètres Ne pas me pister (fr)
administri viajn agordojn pri Ne spuri (eo)

We can use quotes [af,ru], try to translate "Do not track" according to
the sentence [es-AR], or use capital letters but just at the beginning
[fr,eo], pushing then the resulting group of words to a comfortable place.

The question is, can we add things like <i> or <em> to our arsenal of
tools, together with quotes, simple capitalization, and full
translation? Would it always work?

Markup would help us keep the actual noun, the one that is used in other
places. While a translation like "manage your tracking settings" makes
sense, from an UI point of view maybe it's better to have a mention to
the actual "Do Not Track" option.

So the result in locales that cannot use English-like capitalization
would look something like:

"manage your /Do not track/ settings" or maybe "manage your *Do not
track* settings" or whatever markup the locale decides to use.

In FirefoxOS that was an option, used even in en-US, and there was code
to limit the possible tags a localization could use so as to avoid
inadvertently breaking the UI. I know the platform is different, but I
mention it because markup as an option might come in handy for all
locales. And, when the UI designers really mean us to use the same
translation as in other places (say, for discoverability reasons), they
can do so by using markup in en-US.

Eduardo.

[Michael Bauer]

Because gd uses strict lowercasing (at least in theory) and doesn't do
initial caps like that, the convention is to put all references to UI
items into quotes i.e.
Stiùirich na roghainnean “Na tracaich”
It works quite well without having to resport to formatting tags since
that (at least to date) has rarely been an option.

Michael

Sgrìobh Eduardo Trápani na leanas 09/06/2016 aig 19:18:

> "manage your/Do not track/ settings" or maybe "manage your *Do not

> track* settings" or whatever markup the locale decides to use.
>
> In FirefoxOS that was an option, used even in en-US, and there was code
> to limit the possible tags a localization could use so as to avoid
> inadvertently breaking the UI. I know the platform is different, but I
> mention it because markup as an option might come in handy for all
> locales. And, when the UI designers really mean us to use the same
> translation as in other places (say, for discoverability reasons), they
> can do so by using markup in en-US.
>
> Eduardo.

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[Francesco Lodolo]

If you feel the need to highlight the feature name, I would choose the
quotes path: Always apply “Do Not Track”, Always apply «Do Not Track», etc.

If you decide to introduce markup, you really want to test carefully if it
works, I would expect that kind of approach to not be completely reliable
(or fail most of the times).

One of the examples should be this specific string, since it's a checkbox
label in XUL.

Francesco

> "manage your /Do not track/ settings" or maybe "manage your *Do not

> track* settings" or whatever markup the locale decides to use.
>
> In FirefoxOS that was an option, used even in en-US, and there was code
> to limit the possible tags a localization could use so as to avoid
> inadvertently breaking the UI. I know the platform is different, but I
> mention it because markup as an option might come in handy for all
> locales. And, when the UI designers really mean us to use the same
> translation as in other places (say, for discoverability reasons), they
> can do so by using markup in en-US.
>
> Eduardo.

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> dev-...@lists.mozilla.org
> https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-l10n
>

[Leandro Regueiro]

2016-06-09 20:56 GMT+02:00 Francesco Lodolo <fl...@lodolo.net>:
> If you feel the need to highlight the feature name, I would choose the
> quotes path: Always apply “Do Not Track”, Always apply «Do Not Track», etc.
>
> If you decide to introduce markup, you really want to test carefully if it
> works, I would expect that kind of approach to not be completely reliable
> (or fail most of the times).
>
> One of the examples should be this specific string, since it's a checkbox
> label in XUL.

Hi,
I am not an expert, but if there is some entity for the "Do Not Track"
translation, why not change this entity to refer to it instead of
having to translate it again? This won't exclude the need for quoting
but looks saner to me.


Bye

[Francesco Lodolo]

I don't think it's worth for this specific feature (3 occurrences).
Besides, there are plenty of complaints when using a brand name stored in
another entity, since it's harder (or impossible) to decline it for
languages that need it.

Francesco

P.S. I tried out of curiosity, and the result is a broken (not displayed)
preference window (entity is not well formed). Definitely a good idea to
stay away from extra markup.

[Axel Hecht]

So ...

we'll be rewriting Firefox l10n ...

and thus a bunch of Firefox ...

which might turn that UI into html ...

in which we'll allow localizers to use <em> and <i>.

I think.

We'll keep you posted, and yes, we'll do the migration work for you.

Axel

[Michael Bauer]

Doesn't work well for languages which need to inflect at the front or
end, you'll end up with hyphens and spaces in crazy places.

Michael

Sgrìobh Leandro Regueiro na leanas 09/06/2016 aig 20:17:

> Hi,
> I am not an expert, but if there is some entity for the "Do Not Track"
> translation, why not change this entity to refer to it instead of
> having to translate it again? This won't exclude the need for quoting
> but looks saner to me.
>
>
> Bye