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Why do you need translation comments?
Consider this simple case; you have a menu item called "Manual". You know what
it means, but when the translator sees this they will wonder did they mean a) a
document or help manual or b) a manual process? This is the simplest case
where a translation comment such as "The installation manual" helps to clarify
the situation and makes a translator more productive.
More examples
Real world examples are best. This is a discussion over the use of the word
"Forward" in Northern Sotho:
"When you go forward. You go 'Pele', But when you forward the document, O
"Fetišetša pele", so if you just say forward, we don't know what you are
talking about, it is better if it is in a sentence.
But in this case i think we will use 'pele' because on the string no:86 and
88 there is "show previous page in history" and "show next page in history"
Was there translators guess correct? I think so.
What should be commented?
* Ambiguous words
Words that can be used as a noun or verb in English but may have different
names in another language
* Environment variables, Config files entries
Is it really obvious that TERM should not be translated
* Filenames
Filenames that you do not want translated eg .Xauthority. Especially if they
appear translatable.
* Program names
Some sentences do not make it clear that the text refers to a program name
which you probably don't want to translate
* Protocols
Especially when they appear as URIs eg help:index. Also protocol responses eg.
"Server returned HELO" very tempting to translate. Or "KEEPALIVE response".
Should KEEPALIVE be translated?
Types of comments
The types of comments depend very much on the localisation system implemented:
* KDE style comments
The appear to the translator like this:
"_: The installation manual\n"
"Manual"
One advantage is that they can double as context strings. In Gettext PO files
you can only have one translation of the source English word. So if your
language translates an English word differently depending if it is a noun or a
verb then you will have a problem. Context information in a KDE style comment
essentially means that the stings are different and thus allows you to
distinguish between verb and nouns spelled the same way in English.
* Gettext comments
These appear in the # comments of a message block. They are sometimes
overlooked by translators as usually the PO editing tool does not make them
obvious.