So to be clear, for any translators coming across this, this issue has a partial workaround.
Most switchboxes are On/Off, and the 'on' and 'off' strings are only used for the switchbox, so you can set them the same as the French langpack:
$string['off'] = 'O';
$string['on'] = '❙';
Unfortunately, the "Yes" and "No" strings are used in places other than the switchbox, so you can't use the same thing there. Fortunately, most of the "yesno" switchboxes are on the admin side of Mahara. The only one visible to non-admin users is in the form for editing a task in a plan. So, the impact of that bug should be fairly limited.
So to be clear, for any translators coming across this, this issue has a partial workaround.
Most switchboxes are On/Off, and the 'on' and 'off' strings are only used for the switchbox, so you can set them the same as the French langpack:
$string['off'] = 'O';
$string['on'] = '❙';
Unfortunately, the "Yes" and "No" strings are used in places other than the switchbox, so you can't use the same thing there. Fortunately, most of the "yesno" switchboxes are on the admin side of Mahara. The only one visible to non-admin users is in the form for editing a task in a plan. So, the impact of that bug should be fairly limited.