Should strings in square brackets […] be translated?

l10n
#1

Hi everybody,

I am completely new to translating LibreOffice. Please be gentle with me.
:slight_smile:

I have one question: Should strings in square brackets, like "[Time]" in
"Action [Time]: [1]. [2]" be translated or not?

I can see that it is quite different from language to language if they are
translated or not. In German, for instance, it is translated, but in both
variants of Norwegian it is not.

Does anybody know?

I failed to find any style guide or general information about translating
LibreOffice that includes this information. You are most welcome to point
me to such a document if it exists.

Jesper

#2

Hi Jesper,

Hi everybody,

I am completely new to translating LibreOffice. Please be gentle with me.
:slight_smile:

I have one question: Should strings in square brackets, like "[Time]" in
"Action [Time]: [1]. [2]" be translated or not?

I can see that it is quite different from language to language if they are
translated or not. In German, for instance, it is translated, but in both
variants of Norwegian it is not.

Does anybody know?

In msi_languages.po all strings between [ ] brackets are placeholders.
They are not for translation. For example [Time] will be replaced by
the actual time, e.g. 16:12:10 runtime. I did not test what happens,
if [Time] is translated. However, it should not cause a big problem,
because nobody noticed it so far. These strings are used for debugging
the Windows installer or for error messages.

Best regards,
Andras

#3

Hi Jesper,

Hi everybody,

I am completely new to translating LibreOffice. Please be gentle with me.
:slight_smile:

Welcome to our group :slight_smile:

I have one question: Should strings in square brackets, like "[Time]" in
"Action [Time]: [1]. [2]" be translated or not?

I can see that it is quite different from language to language if they are
translated or not. In German, for instance, it is translated, but in both
variants of Norwegian it is not.

Does anybody know?

I failed to find any style guide or general information about translating
LibreOffice that includes this information. You are most welcome to point
me to such a document if it exists.

You'll find a guide here:
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/UI_and_Help_files_Content_Guide

and a Pootle guide here:
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/PootleGuide

The entry point for translators is here:
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Translating_LibreOffice

Kind regards
Sophie