Short translatable strings need context

[Pasi Kallinen]

*EG master

Very short translatable texts need context before they can be properly translated. For example, there's is no way to translate the string " for " if the target language has no prepositions as separate words. (The translator might also wonder if that used as a conjunction...) The comment text in the po-files shows the source file and line, but for non-programmers that most likely means nothing.

GNU gettext has a capability for context strings in po-files, "msgctxt". This should be used for those texts that are ambiguous, or do not have clear context in themselves.

This (mostly) applies to one-word strings, and mostly to OPAC - some of the message catalogs do use the msgctxt context strings.

[Pasi Kallinen (paxed)]

Actually, the translation of the searchbar (where the " for " - and another bad translation string " in " - comes from) could be fixed (more nicely, IMO) if the translatable string was "Search %1 for %2%3 in %4", where the placeholders get replaced by format_selector, search_input, search_type_selector, and library_selector.

But there are more translatable strings that really need the context.

[Pasi Kallinen (paxed)]

Another example: "State" - is this about country or condition?