A few questions about translating color names

l10n
#1

I did an overview of translation of various colors used in LO, and in doing so had some questions. These questions are probably more towards developers than fellow translators and l10n admins, but I don't know which specific developers to ask, or if the dev mailing list is a good place for such questions. So here they are, please direct me to proper channels if needed.

In this email I'm going to refer to several strings, and Weblate links are a bit cumbersome, so I'm going to use line numbers of the file core/include/svx/strings.hrc instead:
https://opengrok.libreoffice.org/xref/core/include/svx/strings.hrc?r=b680547a

1. Line 561-566, these are names of several colors used as default in various places. My questions are: (a) Does it mean different locales can actually use different default colors if we change it in the translation? And if not, what's the point of making it translatable? (b) What happens if the translation of these strings don't match the translation of the actual color names? This is easier to happen than perceived, as for example line 562 has "Dark Red 2", but for the translation of actual names there is only "Dark Red", and the " 2" part is added automatically without translation. So if a translator was tempted to translate the numbers to something language specific, there will be mismatch.

2. Line 627-651, these are colors used by the "material" palette. There are quite a few names like "Color A" in it. However these are not the full names of the colors, as the full names are like "Gray A200", with the "200" again added automatically without translation. So my question is: Why not just include the " A" part as the automatic suffix as well? After all, both Greek alphabet and Cyrillic alphabet starts with a letter close enough to the Latin "A", and it's not likely languages using other alphabets will translate this "A" part anyway. I can also imagine the headache this will cause for RTL languages.

3. Line 652-665, these are declared to be old names and likely used for backward compatibility reasons. My question is: Would the old files use localized names? If so, should we refrain from ever changing the translations of these? Then again, color pink is used in other palettes like material.

Thanks in advance,
Ming

#2

Hi Ming,

I did an overview of translation of various colors used in LO, and in doing so had some questions. These questions are probably more towards developers than fellow translators and l10n admins, but I don't know which specific developers to ask, or if the dev mailing list is a good place for such questions. So here they are, please direct me to proper channels if needed.

In this email I'm going to refer to several strings, and Weblate links are a bit cumbersome, so I'm going to use line numbers of the file core/include/svx/strings.hrc instead:
https://opengrok.libreoffice.org/xref/core/include/svx/strings.hrc?r=b680547a

1. Line 561-566, these are names of several colors used as default in various places. My questions are: (a) Does it mean different locales can actually use different default colors if we change it in the translation?

Only the name of the color will be changed, not the color itself
And if not, what's the point of making it translatable?
when you over a color, its name appears and it's also read by screen
readers, so it's mandatory to have them translated
  (b) What happens if the translation of these strings don't match the
translation of the actual color names? This is easier to happen than
perceived, as for example line 562 has "Dark Red 2", but for the
translation of actual names there is only "Dark Red", and the " 2" part
is added automatically without translation. So if a translator was
tempted to translate the numbers to something language specific, there
will be mismatch.
This is part of the translation, see
https://weblate.documentfoundation.org/translate/libo_ui-master/svxmessages/fr/?checksum=127eea4231a364b1
or is there something I don't undersand?

2. Line 627-651, these are colors used by the "material" palette. There are quite a few names like "Color A" in it. However these are not the full names of the colors, as the full names are like "Gray A200", with the "200" again added automatically without translation. So my question is: Why not just include the " A" part as the automatic suffix as well? After all, both Greek alphabet and Cyrillic alphabet starts with a letter close enough to the Latin "A", and it's not likely languages using other alphabets will translate this "A" part anyway. I can also imagine the headache this will cause for RTL languages.

Where do you see that the name is Gray A200? could you tell me in which
module and palette?

3. Line 652-665, these are declared to be old names and likely used for backward compatibility reasons. My question is: Would the old files use localized names? If so, should we refrain from ever changing the translations of these? Then again, color pink is used in other palettes like material.

Again, it's only a name, if you have a green color and translate it to
blue in your language, that will only be seen as a wrong translation,
but won't prevent to do anything with the color. Or maybe I missed
something in your questions.
Cheers
Sophie

#3

Hi Sophie,

------------------ Original ------------------
Send time: Friday, May 15, 2020 8:18 PM

Hi Ming,

1. Line 561-566, these are names of several colors used as default in
various places. My questions are: (a) Does it mean different locales
can actually use different default colors if we change it in the translation?

Only the name of the color will be changed, not the color itself

And if not, what's the point of making it translatable?

when you over a color, its name appears and it's also read by screen
readers, so it's mandatory to have them translated

Good to know. My argument is then the translation can be automatically
generated from other translatons, instead of making translators to do it
twice. But that's a trivial thing.

(b) What happens if the translation of these strings don't match the
translation of the actual color names? This is easier to happen than
perceived, as for example line 562 has "Dark Red 2", but for the
translation of actual names there is only "Dark Red", and the " 2" part
is added automatically without translation. So if a translator was
tempted to translate the numbers to something language specific, there
will be mismatch.

This is part of the translation, see
https://weblate.documentfoundation.org/translate/libo_ui-master/svxmessages/fr/?checksum=127eea4231a364b1
or is there something I don't undersand?

You understood fine. My question (b) is about what happens if the
French translator decides to translate it as "Rouge foncé deux",
which won't match the "Rouge foncé 2" name in the palette. But from
your answer above I guess it doesn't matter much, just a discrepancy
between two strings describing the same color.

2. Line 627-651, these are colors used by the "material" palette.
There are quite a few names like "Color A" in it. However these
are not the full names of the colors, as the full names are like "Gray
A200", with the "200" again added automatically without translation.
So my question is: Why not just include the " A" part as the
automatic suffix as well? After all, both Greek alphabet and Cyrillic
alphabet starts with a letter close enough to the Latin "A", and it's
not likely languages using other alphabets will translate this "A" part
anyway. I can also imagine the headache this will cause for RTL
languages.

Where do you see that the name is Gray A200? could you tell me in which
module and palette?

In the "material" palette, the two columns on the right, and the module
shouldn't matter. It's only avaiable in 7.0 though.

3. Line 652-665, these are declared to be old names and likely used
for backward compatibility reasons. My question is: Would the old
files use localized names? If so, should we refrain from ever
changing the translations of these? Then again, color pink is used
in other palettes like material.

Again, it's only a name, if you have a green color and translate it to
blue in your language, that will only be seen as a wrong translation,
but won't prevent to do anything with the color. Or maybe I missed
something in your questions.

You may have missed a bit, but it's not important. As long as I know I'm
free to change these translations, I'm good.

Thanks,
Ming

#4

This is part of the translation, see
https://weblate.documentfoundation.org/translate/libo_ui-master/svxmessages/fr/?checksum=127eea4231a364b1
or is there something I don't undersand?

You understood fine. My question (b) is about what happens if the
French translator decides to translate it as "Rouge foncé deux",
which won't match the "Rouge foncé 2" name in the palette.

A bit more clarification: my understanding is that the name shown in the
palette will be from
https://weblate.documentfoundation.org/translate/libo_ui-master/svxmessages/fr/?checksum=e599d9f72b8eb77b
with " 2" added to the end, therefore "Rouge foncé 2".

Ming

#5

This is two different strings, see the KeyID for Dark Red 2 is mFU2A
when the KeyID for Dark Red is st4Zy. Both strings will be used in the UI.
Cheers
Sophie