109 lines
4.5 KiB
Markdown
109 lines
4.5 KiB
Markdown
Translation Strings Policy
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===========================
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This document provides guidelines for internationalization of the Bitcoin Core software.
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How to translate?
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------------------
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To mark a message as translatable
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- In GUI source code (under `src/qt`): use `tr("...")`
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- In non-GUI source code (under `src`): use `_("...")`
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No internationalization is used for e.g. developer scripts outside `src`.
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Strings to be translated
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-------------------------
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On a high level, these strings are to be translated:
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- GUI strings, anything that appears in a dialog or window
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- Command-line option documentation
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### GUI strings
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Anything that appears to the user in the GUI is to be translated. This includes labels, menu items, button texts, tooltips and window titles.
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This includes messages passed to the GUI through the UI interface through `InitMessage`, `ThreadSafeMessageBox` or `ShowProgress`.
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### Command-line options
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Documentation for the command line options in the output of `--help` should be translated as well.
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Make sure that default values do not end up in the string, but use string formatting like `strprintf(_("Threshold for disconnecting misbehaving peers (default: %u)"), 100)`. Putting default values in strings has led to accidental translations in the past, and forces the string to be retranslated every time the value changes.
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Do not translate messages that are only shown to developers, such as those that only appear when `--help-debug` is used.
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General recommendations
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------------------------
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### Avoid unnecessary translation strings
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Try not to burden translators with translating messages that are e.g. slight variations of other messages.
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In the GUI, avoid the use of text where an icon or symbol will do.
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Make sure that placeholder texts in forms don't end up in the list of strings to be translated (use `<string notr="true">`).
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### Make translated strings understandable
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Try to write translation strings in an understandable way, for both the user and the translator. Avoid overly technical or detailed messages
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### Do not translate internal errors
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Do not translate internal errors, or log messages, or messages that appear on the RPC interface. If an error is to be shown to the user,
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use a translatable generic message, then log the detailed message to the log. E.g. "A fatal internal error occurred, see debug.log for details".
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This helps troubleshooting; if the error is the same for everyone, the likelihood is increased that it can be found using a search engine.
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### Avoid fragments
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Avoid dividing up a message into fragments. Translators see every string separately, so may misunderstand the context if the messages are not self-contained.
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### Avoid HTML in translation strings
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There have been difficulties with use of HTML in translation strings; translators should not be able to accidentally affect the formatting of messages.
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This may sometimes be at conflict with the recommendation in the previous section.
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### Plurals
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Plurals can be complex in some languages. A quote from the gettext documentation:
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In Polish we use e.g. plik (file) this way:
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1 plik,
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2,3,4 pliki,
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5-21 pliko'w,
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22-24 pliki,
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25-31 pliko'w
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and so on
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In Qt code use tr's third argument for optional plurality. For example:
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tr("%n hour(s)","",secs/HOUR_IN_SECONDS);
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tr("%n day(s)","",secs/DAY_IN_SECONDS);
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tr("%n week(s)","",secs/WEEK_IN_SECONDS);
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This adds `<numerusform>`s to the respective `.ts` file, which can be translated separately depending on the language. In English, this is simply:
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<message numerus="yes">
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<source>%n active connection(s) to Bitcoin network</source>
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<translation>
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<numerusform>%n active connection to Bitcoin network</numerusform>
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<numerusform>%n active connections to Bitcoin network</numerusform>
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</translation>
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</message>
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Where it is possible try to avoid embedding numbers into the flow of the string at all. e.g.
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WARNING: check your network connection, %d blocks received in the last %d hours (%d expected)
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versus
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WARNING: check your network connection, less blocks (%d) were received in the last %n hours than expected (%d).
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The second example reduces the number of pluralized words that translators have to handle from three to one, at no cost to comprehensibility of the sentence.
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### String freezes
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During a string freeze (often before a major release), no translation strings are to be added, modified or removed.
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This can be checked by executing `make translate` in the `src` directory, then verifying that `bitcoin_en.ts` remains unchanged.
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