Textpattern CMS support forum
You are not logged in. Register | Login | Help
- Topics: Active | Unanswered
[textpacks] Empty string or best guess?
This is a question for Textpattern users with non-English languages, and also for the development team.
In the instances where there are language packs with incomplete strings, which is best:
- a blank entry so the Textpattern placeholder text is used
- a best guess from a translation service like Google Translate
I know ‘best’ is subjective, but as an English language speaker on an English language CMS I don’t have much experience with multiple languages.
My take is that best guess beats empty string, and a translation that’s almost correct in the chosen language is better than a message_for_something_specific_goes_here placeholder.
What do you think?
Offline
Re: [textpacks] Empty string or best guess?
Blank string.
Because you know, a word may mean something in one context, but something completely different, eventually offensive, in a different context, and free translation services don’t do a very good job at understanding context (ahem – they usually s**k).
To give you an example, slightly extreme. Some 15years ago there was, in Japan a car model (nissan, iirc) named ラプター (raptor) transliterated as ‘laputa’, which is not kind for Spanish speakers – written like that on the back of the car. Because that is how it is pronounced in Japanese…
Last edited by phiw13 (2015-02-20 09:10:59)
Where is that emoji for a solar powered submarine when you need it ?
Sand space – admin theme for Textpattern
Offline
Re: [textpacks] Empty string or best guess?
I agree with Philippe – best to leave them empty than use some wonky translation.
I think that in the case of empty strings it reverts to the en-gb text strings, and then if that’s empty too uses the string name itself. I may be wrong on that.
Offline
Re: [textpacks] Empty string or best guess?
By the way, there are some language in the RPC database that just don’t have the strings at all right now – totally missing the lines in their dataset – I’m gradually working through the RPC fixing those occurrences.
Offline
Re: [textpacks] Empty string or best guess?
Thanks, gents – very useful to know.
Offline