Re: Translation of modifier keys

[Christian Rose <menthos menthos com>]

Owen Taylor wrote:
> Currently, the keys always appear in the menu as "Shift", "Ctrl",
> and "Alt". Marking these for translation is the work of a minute,
> but before doing that, I'd like to ask:
> 
>  - Is there are a standard for what appears on the keyboard for
>    your locale? (I know in some places, symbols are used instead
>    of words as well.)

I don't know of an actual standard for Swedish computer keyboards, I
think it's more of like a loosely agreed-upon standard. I believe only
the keys that are remnants of old typewriters are really standardized.
I've never seen a modern Swedish PC keyboard where
Insert/Delete/Home/End/PageUp/PageDown and End weren't named
"Insert"/"Delete"/"Home"/"End"/"Page Up"/"Page Down" for example, or
where the decimal key on the numeric keypad didn't have a comma on it,
or where CapsLock wasn't "Caps Lock", and so on.

On the other hand, at least some keys seems to have different symbols
depending on the keyboard manufacturer, but those seems to be
exceptions. The only example I can think of on the Swedish keyboard is
the naming of the Return key. I actually did an quick, unscientific
investigation of this some time ago when we had a debate on what this
key is to be called in Swedish: the translation of "Return", or "Enter"
(as the key on the numeric keypad). Out of 14 keyboards, 9 used only a
newline arrow as the symbol for this key, 5 had both this arrow and the
text "Enter", and none had only the text "Enter". So both variants seem
to be present, although the arrow-only type seems to be more common.
I think we'll probably end up recommending calling this key "Retur"
(translation of "Return"), because that name is also used, it isn't
wrong in most cases, and the GNOME Documentation Guidelines seems to be
advocating the use of this name because it minimizes confusion between
this key and the "Enter" key on the numeric keypad.


On to your other point, that symbols are used sometimes. Yes, it's very
true, but these keys usually often still have a native name, used in
daily speak and in, maybe more important, documentation. In
documentation, they are usually spelled out as text with their
translated name.


>  - Is there a danger of over-translation here? (That is, translating
>    Alt to something that "means alt" rather than what appears on
>    keyboards.)

Over-translation is always an issue. However, I think you can minimize
this danger by using the "comment-fetching" feature of xgettext and put
a comment immediately on the line above:

	/* Translators: Translate this to the name of the 'Alt' key on
	   the keyboard layout of your locale. This is used when describing
	   shortcuts. */
	N_("Alt"),

I think the problem of this string maybe not being unique enough is more
severe. If it turns out that key names cannot be translated seperately
in the po file because they are identical to other strings, then that
has to be solved somehow. But unless this happens, I don't see a
problem.


>  - What do other toolkits / operating systems do?

If I remember correctly, Windows uses translated key names. I'm fairly
sure at least that Strg was "Strg" in the menus of German localized
Windows, the last time I used it.


> In theory, it would be possible to ask the Xkb extension of X what
> actually appears on the keyboard, but in practice, that isn't going
> to be properly configured in 99% of all cases.

You mean "PageUp" being called "Prior" and so on? :)


Christian