token: should we translate?

[xavier]

Hi,

I'm struggling right now trying to select token, because I have no idea how it was translated.

Is this a good idea to translate "Affichage du nom" that you select to get {contact.display_name} ? I'm not saying it's a bad translation, but that translation of "technical" words is bad. Remember excel with the name for functions & macro that was translated? Yeap, almost that bad IMO.

Or at least display the name of the token next to the translation?

X+

[mathieu]

The "Display Name" translation has been fixed in recent translations, changed to "Nom affiché" (not perfect, but more accurate).

I like the idea of adding the token next to the name:

* once the token is insert into the form, we only see the technical name
* the user might forget what it means, and want to look it up
* not everyone prefers english tech terms, especially non-tech people (some people freak out when they see english in forms, and just assume they have stumbled upon a section that they were not supposed to access).

While we're on the topic of that insert token box, could we increase its height from 5 lines to 10? Scrolling in tiny boxes requires a lot of concentration (this is a common complaint about those civimail include/exclude form, which I always end up increasing in my local CSS).

It would also be much clearer (imho) if we could group token by category (name, address, communication preferences), but that doesn't seem easy technically. Not sure if prefixing the field by its category would be an option.

Anecdotal: LibreOffice/OpenOffice translates macro names in French. i.e. somme(A1:A10) instead of sum(A1:A10). It will not even let you enter the english function name - which can be kind of annoying since everyone has a different locale on their computer. However, I do think people feel more confortable with the tool when it's in their language. (and yes, I know we already have different views on this, c.f. our debate about terms such as "CiviMail") :-)

[xavier]

The "Display Name" translation has been fixed in recent translations, changed to "Nom affiché" (not perfect, but more accurate).

Cool, that was an example of one I really struggled to find more, but the problem is more general

While we're on the topic of that insert token box, could we increase its height from 5 lines to 10? Scrolling in tiny boxes requires a lot of concentration (this is a common complaint about those civimail include/exclude form, which I always end up increasing in my local CSS).

It would also be much clearer (imho) if we could group token by category (name, address, communication preferences), but that doesn't seem easy technically. Not sure if prefixing the field by its category would be an option.

Grouping makes sense. Was looking at a nice tool for the layout IMO (select2).  I'll add that to the todo for the sprint this september
[/quote]


Anecdotal: LibreOffice/OpenOffice translates macro names in French. i.e. somme(A1:A10) instead of sum(A1:A10). It will not even let you enter the english function name - which can be kind of annoying since everyone has a different locale on their computer. However, I do think people feel more confortable with the tool when it's in their language. (and yes, I know we already have different views on this, c.f. our debate about terms such as "CiviMail") :-)
[/quote]


I believe you meant the software "BureauLibre", and I rest my case

Seriously, not being able to run a macro that has been written by a user that has a different locale than you is braindead IMO.

[mathieu]

Usability improvements / select2 / sprints: awsome !

Tangent topic: in LibreOffice, the macros are saved internally in the correct format, so they can run everywhere. It's just the annoyance for multi-lingual users that have to remember multiple function names for the same thing.

For the record, LibreOffice components are translated: Texte, Classeur, Présentation, etc. Imagine if they were LibreSpreadsheet, it would be annoying. That's kind of how I feel towards names such as CiviMail, CiviEvent.. They kind of make sense in English, but not in French.
I don't argue we should translate the program's name, but we should avoid english-specific component names when possible. Although I'm not insisting on this for fr_FR. In fr_CA we decided to remove component names, translators/users were vastly in favor of that.

For real fun, and complete tangent, some languages do translate program names:
- Bulgarians often do: https://bg.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux (the Gnome BG translation is awsome)
- Russians usually don't: https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux (although the name "Wikipedia" itself, is translated)

(yes, I have unfortunately witnessed too many translator debates, but I find these things fascinating. Had fun times participating in Spip.net translations, and the European Social Forum/Babel events, many years ago :-)