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Lately I’ve received a few pull requests that add translations to extensions (woo yay!). However I’ve noticed that these also translate field names and other instances where the extension name exists (such as the field name in the section editor).

What is the convention here? I have a worry that some extensions are so well known by their original names that translating them may lead to confusion. There is no alternative translation for “Mediathek” for example (and it’s a brilliant name too!). So if a developer downloads and installs the “Publish Tabs” extension, it will show as “Publish Tabs” in the System > Extensions list, but when they add a tab to a section, the section editor would display the name translated to their locale?

My worry is that some extensions occasionally become known as abbreviations: SSM = Subsection Manager; SBL = Select Box Link etc. If these are translated in the UI, is there a risk of ambiguity?

I think the following convention would be appropriate:

  • Never translate the names in the extensions table (where you select and install them)
  • Where possible and appropriate, translate all other items added to the backend (section editor field names, menu items, page titles etc.)

This will provide a coherently translated backend while keeping the extension name that can be found here on getsymphony.com.

P.S. I believe that’s what fields like SBL are doing already.

Removed due to @phoques’ comment.

It seems like you edited/removed your first version of this thread I just replied to. So I try again :)

It’s a difficult decision: I tend to disallow the translation of extension names, e. g. in extension.driver.php, but allow the translation of field names for the section editor. This has two reasons:

  • First of all, developers who are installing extension know that this forum is English only. So they know the English names of the extensions and they also know that abbreviations like “SSM” or “SBL” are always meant to be English. For consistency reason I think it’s good when extension names are the same across installs and translations.
  • I think it’s different with field names in the section editor though: there might be better, more descriptive names in other languages, so I like to give translators the option to translate the field names. If Subsection Manager would be named “Unterbereichverwaltung” in German it would be just fine for me as it says what it does. And I don’t think that anyone will have problems to map the translations to the English source. All developers coming from other countries are trained to switch languages based on context.

Thanks guys, this confirms what I thought — the precedent we have set seems to make sense, so we should continue. I haven’t got many translations for my extensions so it’s only now that I’ve ever given this thought.

I don’t think Symphony allows us to translate the main extension name itself, so we are guarded by this.

@vladG your comment was totally valid, no need to remove it :-)

(And yes, I delete the original thread in haste. Apologies.)

@nick, well yes, but I like the shorter and cleaner way phoque said it. No need to waste the reader’s time with same thing.

I’ve been doing a bit of the translations, and I was actually thinking a bit about this myself yesterday when updating my norwegian translation of SSM.

For my own part I won’t translate names like Mediathek and Subsection Manager. Partly because I think the name should be recognizable but also because it’s often hard to find a translated name that makes sense and still resembles the original name. One norwegian “problem” is that we like merging words together (like in german I guess), and so names like SSM can get long if just translated directly: Underseksjonsbehandler. A variant of this to make it easier on the eyes would be “Behandler for underseksjon” (Manager for Subsection), but then I feel it becomes more detached from the original name.

But here’s a related question: Shouldn’t extensions try to use Symphony core terms as much as possible in their strings? I think SSM uses the word “item” a lot, which mostly refers to what Symphony calls “entry”? I’ve translated both of these terms to the same word in norwegian.

But here’s a related question: Shouldn’t extensions try to use Symphony core terms as much as possible in their strings? I think SSM uses the word “item” a lot, which mostly refers to what Symphony calls “entry”? I’ve translated both of these terms to the same word in norwegian.

This was intentional to distinguish between the parent section and the subsection. But I’m open for discussion in this matter.

So, to be clear, I should not be integrating pull requests that only translate the name of the extension? For example:

Where possible and appropriate, translate all other items added to the backend (section editor field names, menu items, page titles etc.)

So I think this is correct as it’s a menu item exposed to the user.

Ah. Thanks, Nick. I’ll pull it in, then.

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