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Subject: Re: Is translating server messages really worth it?
From: Daniel Gustafsson <daniel@yesql.se>
In-Reply-To: <495525.1696993977@sss.pgh.pa.us>
Date: Fri, 13 Oct 2023 10:42:41 +0200
Cc: Alvaro Herrera <alvherre@alvh.no-ip.org>,
 Peter Eisentraut <peter@eisentraut.org>,
 Peter Geoghegan <pg@bowt.ie>,
 Guillaume Lelarge <guillaume@lelarge.info>,
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To: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
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> On 11 Oct 2023, at 05:12, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:

> Maybe it'd be worth making a sweep to find messages that we don't
> really think the average user will ever see, and marking those
> as not to be translated.  Then going forward, we'd have to have
> a policy that people should think about that when writing new
> errors.

I think that would be a good idea regardless.  Lowering the barrier to =
entry
for a new translation without lowering the quality would make it less =
daunting
to start a new language, or revitalize a stale one.

We already have a style guide for messages which is followed, adding to =
it a
policy for internal/translatable messages seems like a low cognitive =
overhead.
The documentation already have these:

    errmsg_internal(const char *msg, ...) is the same as errmsg, except =
that
    the message string will not be translated nor included in the
    internationalization message dictionary.  This should be used for =
=E2=80=9Ccannot
    happen=E2=80=9D cases that are probably not worth expending =
translation effort on.

    errdetail_internal(const char *msg, ...) is the same as errdetail, =
except
    that the message string will not be translated nor included in the
    internationalization message dictionary.  This should be used for =
detail
    messages that are not worth expending translation effort on, for =
instance
    because they are too technical to be useful to most users.

Adding section on translated/internal to the style guide might be a good =
idea.

> I'm not sure how this would play into the upthread point about
> regulatory compliance.  If there's somebody out there who has a hard
> requirement for 100% translation, I'm afraid we will never satisfy
> that. =20

There is that. I think optimizing for making life easier for translators =
by
allowing them focus on the messages that matter and are expected to be =
seen is
more important.

--
Daniel Gustafsson