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From: Peter Smith <[email protected]>
To: Tom Lane <[email protected]>
Cc: David Rowley <[email protected]>
Cc: PostgreSQL Developers <[email protected]>
Cc: Amit Kapila <[email protected]>
Cc: Peter Eisentraut <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: Get rid of translation strings that only contain punctuation
Date: Wed, 22 Apr 2026 12:20:08 +1000
Message-ID: <CAHut+PsonSOOmpWa+p5pWWf_wks8V7=w9OhHeTP1jA0=oukCjA@mail.gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <[email protected]>
References: <CAApHDvoFSu5zLFvx96aZ5wvL7tcB9aR2hBPCaMPs8D_f0Z7eSw@mail.gmail.com>
	<CAHut+PvGk6H=B72_3YmyyZp8ZW=aYoSsoGrtiBEuMNUHHXXFmQ@mail.gmail.com>
	<[email protected]>

On Wed, Apr 22, 2026 at 11:31 AM Tom Lane <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> Peter Smith <[email protected]> writes:
> > On Wed, Apr 22, 2026 at 10:30 AM David Rowley <[email protected]> wrote:
> >> Should we get rid of these?
>
> > This question overlaps with another thread of mine [1].
> > There, I was told that a punctuation double-quote (")  *should* be translated.
>
> It should be, but it *has to be translated as part of a coherent
> message*.  As the examples in [1] show, several languages translate
> opening and closing double-quotes differently.  So if you write _("\"")
> there is zero hope of that being usefully translatable.
>
> This all goes back to the translatability guideline about not
> constructing messages out of parts [2].  If you've got a single
> punctuation mark as a separate string, you are violating both the
> letter and the spirit of that guideline, and that has consequences
> for translatability.
>
>                         regards, tom lane
>
> [1] https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/CAHut%2BPui7RaQ8OfJEVn2ry-ykjnGc%2B3ujsFmcHDFw9FsXw_tRw%40mail...
> [2] https://www.postgresql.org/docs/devel/nls-programmer.html#NLS-GUIDELINES

To my knowledge, we aren't violating that guideline because our
substituted parts aren't words of a sentence; they are quoted names in
a list

e.g.

Case#1: publication "XXX" has a problem

Case#2: the following publications have a problem: "XXX", "YYY", "ZZZ"

~~~

Case#1 is easy. "publication \"%s\" has a problem"
The quotes are part of the message, so they get translated as normal.

Case#2 is more fiddly. "the following publications have a problem: %s"
The substituted quoted-name list is constructed at runtime, but still,
we require those quotes to be translated so that quoted-names in cases
#1 and #2 look the same.

======
Kind Regards,
Peter Smith.
Fujitsu Australia

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