On Apr 13, 2008, at 4:43 PM, Leonardo Fontenelle wrote:
... When we translate user interfaces, we often get short, contextless messages such as "toggle". Let's suppose somehow I know it's a verb. "Alternar" is as geeky as "toggle", and even less clear. I would pick a different verb, depending on what is been toggled, but I can't guess what is been toggled. ...
I suggest reporting any short, contextless message as a localizability bug for the program. :-)
I'm not a translator, but I am a developer on a project hosting service (Launchpad) that lets you set up your software for people to translate. And as I understand it, if the context of a string is unclear, the source code is supposed to contain a comment explaining the context. This comment gets picked up in the .pot file and is presented to translators (for example, Launchpad presents the comment with an "(i)" icon under the original string).
Cheers -- Matthew Paul Thomas http://mpt.net.nz/