Re: Is translating server messages really worth it?

> On 11 Oct 2023, at 05:12, Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)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 “cannot
happen” 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.

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