Dutch lowercase translation warnings

[Joost Cassee]

Running any command line snap command with Dutch localization generates these warnings:

2018/05/24 15:24:56.317817 main.go:148: description of sign's "k" is lowercase: "naam van de te gebruiken sleutel, gebruik anders de standaardsleutel"
2018/05/24 15:24:56.317950 main.go:148: description of install's "dangerous" is lowercase: "installeer het opgegeven snapbestand zelfs indien er geen vooraf erkende handtekeningen voor zijn, hetgeen betekent dat het niet werd geverifieerd en dus gevaarlijk zou kunnen zijn (--devmode impliceert dit)"

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 18.04
Package: snapd 2.32.8+18.04
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 4.15.0-22.24-generic 4.15.17
Uname: Linux 4.15.0-22-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia_modeset nvidia
ApportVersion: 2.20.9-0ubuntu7
Architecture: amd64
CurrentDesktop: communitheme:ubuntu:GNOME
Date: Thu May 24 15:27:35 2018
InstallationDate: Installed on 2018-05-23 (0 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 18.04 LTS "Bionic Beaver" - Release amd64 (20180426)
SourcePackage: snapd
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[John Lenton (chipaca)]

Sorry we didn't spot this report! We're fixing it now.

[Timo Kluck (tkluck)]

Thanks for finding the source of this puzzling message! I noticed John and Daniel made translation suggestions for both of the offending messages; what needs to happen to merge them?

Moreover, if you'll allow me an additional comment on this:

I really like that you care so much about UX and copy quality that you added a form of automatic testing for it. Having said that, the delivery of the results of its is suboptimal:

 - this issue is not actionable for users (except for filing a bug report).
 - translators typically won't see these errors (or even realize that they caused it; it's really quite cryptic)
 - developers won't test very many locales

It's also quite scary to get a warning from your package manager -- "how badly broken is my system?" -- and that's not really fitting for such a harmless issue.

It might be wiser to put these kinds of warnings in a CI build that deliberately scans all translations. And even if that's not in place yet, I would err on the side of just suppressing this warning from the end-user binary for now; it's not an effective tool for what it's trying to do.

[John Lenton (chipaca)]

Timo, I appreciate your concerns and mostly agree with what you're saying, with some "but"s.

We are running a test across all locales. We had an issue (that was made obvious by this bug), where we weren't pulling the updated translations from launchpad back into our tree. We've fixed this, although we need to revisit to make sure it's happening automatically at some point.

The warning as presented is not actionable by users. I need to reword it so that it's clear that the expected action _is_ to file a bug (or contact us on IRC, or the snapcraft forum). I'll get on that later this week (and while this is part of addressing the root cause of this bug, I don't feel it's part of this bug per se).

Translators won't see the errors -- yeah, I don't know how to fix this. There's no simple way for a translator to update their system with the translations they just did, to see how they look in context. We have gone through all i18n'ed strings and made sure they have an appropriate // TRANSLATORS comment to mitigate this issue.

HTH, HAND.

[Joost Cassee (jcassee)]

I'd like to +1 Timo's comment. Even after filing a bug, the warning is printed every time the snap command is run until the bugfix propagates to the stable repository, which may be months (in this case). Alternatively, an environment variable to silence these warning would be appreciated. (It seems to me this kind of problem should theoretically be discoverable during build time, although the particular build system may not support it.)

[Igor Zubarev (igor.zubarev)]

This bug is similar to
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/snap/+bug/1806761

Please help to fix it too

[Hannie Dumoleyn (lafeber-dumoleyn)]

Is something wrong with the Dutch translation? In what module can I find these strings? What does it say in English?

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Looks like that was fixed in https://github.com/snapcore/snapd/commit/7d418342 but there has been no new version upload to Ubuntu since that commit

[RavanH (ravanhagen)]

There is a manual fix (or work-around?) suggested here https://forum.snapcraft.io/t/weird-error-message-whenever-i-run-the-snap-command/6418/16 ...

[Timo Kluck (tkluck)]

These warnings are still happening on the current Disco release.

Please take my remarks (see above) to heart. I'd imagine a "proper fix", whatever that ends up being, has moderate/low priority, but meanwhile, this is in my (and other Dutch users') faces multiple times per day. It prints whatever message happens to be formatted "incorrectly", which in this case is a message containing the phrase "(...) might be dangerous (...)". This is printed for _every_ apt and snap action!

Please, please, I implore you, if you do nothing else, just remove these warnings. The supposed benefit really can't be worth the cost.

[John Lenton (chipaca)]

@Timo, I thought we'd fixed the apt issue. I'll ask.

[Timo Kluck (tkluck)]

@John, thanks for replying. I just double-checked and I stand corrected. I can only reproduce with snap itself, not any more with apt. (The rest of my comment still stands.)

Thanks for looking into this!

[Hannie Dumoleyn (lafeber-dumoleyn)]

All I can find is https://translations.launchpad.net/ubuntu/bionic/+source/snapd/+pots/snappy/nl/+translate
I am not sure if this bug has anything to do with us translators at Ubuntu Dutch Translators

[John Lenton (chipaca)]

Hannie, yes, there's a bug in the translation. A fix was proposed by different people last year. The message string this bug was about had a fix proposed by me on 2018-09-26, but I think there were others that helped with other strings (although I might be getting my languages mixed up).

That proposed fix has not yet been reviewed by translators, and so the bug is still there.

[Timo Kluck (tkluck)]

Mind if I bump this ticket?

FWIW, the fact that this is still there is testament to the inefficacy of the warning. In my opinion, intrusive but ineffective warnings are a misfeature that should be fixed in the code.

If you can't make time, would it help if I send a pull request?

[Hannie Dumoleyn (lafeber-dumoleyn)]

As lead of Ubuntu Dutch Translators and Gnome Dutch translators, I'd say, go ahead. I have no idea what I, as a translator, can do about this problem.

[Gunnar Hjalmarsson (gunnarhj)]

@Hannie:

Approving the suggested translations in question would probably help.

https://translations.launchpad.net/ubuntu/eoan/+source/snapd/+pots/snappy/nl/177

https://translations.launchpad.net/ubuntu/eoan/+source/snapd/+pots/snappy/nl/208

[Hannie Dumoleyn (lafeber-dumoleyn)]

@ Gunnar: I will do just that. Thanks for the link.

[Gunnar Hjalmarsson (gunnarhj)]

@Hannie: The POT has changed since I posted those links, so they are obsolete. This one remains to be fixed:

https://translations.launchpad.net/ubuntu/eoan/+source/snapd/+pots/snappy/nl/?search=standaardsleutel

[Duke (duke1995)]

@Hannie: Zou je de suggestie voor de resterende vertaling kunnen goedkeuren (zie de opmerking van Gunnar hierboven)?
https://translations.launchpad.net/ubuntu/eoan/+source/snapd/+pots/snappy/nl/215/+translate
Bij voorbaat dank.

[Nic (nicwortel)]

I just did a fresh install of Ubuntu 20.04 and ran into this issue. I have sent an email to the translation team hoping that this issue can be resolved.

[Pjotr12345 (computertip)]

@Nic: fixed. Thanks for the alert.