[Xfce-i18n] should console messages be translated?

[Leandro Regueiro]

On Wed, Jul 23, 2008 at 9:04 AM, Kristjan Siimson
<kristjan.siimson at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> 2008/7/23 Nick Schermer <nickschermer at gmail.com>:
>>
>> How can a translator know if it's a console message or not? Indeed
>> they can't. The string might even be used multiple times (in both
>> console and gui). The only thing is, if you use error messages from
>> (for exaple) glib, then they are translated. So it could result in a
>> half translated message.
>
> Sure they can! There are various ways for commenting messages, at least one
> created for specifically this purpose - separating the comment and string
> with |, for example Tooltip|Create CD.

IMHO, strings like Tooltip|Create CD lead the translators to
confusion. Please use msgctxt for the context.

About the discussed issue: translate that messages is good to help the
users understand the problem, but if they try to search in the
internet they didn't find nothing if they search with translated
messages unless the official documentation also use the translated
messages. You could include a numeric code in the messages to bypass
that problem. Also the translators could translate the strings in an
incorrect way, but this could happen with all the other translations.

My suggestion is to make them translatables and make sure that the
official docs have a refference to the translated messages, and the
messages could include a numeric code to help.

Bye,
               Leandro Regueiro