[Localization] VERY long string in etoys

[Clytie Siddall]

Hi everyone :)

I've CC'd this to Bert, since he just posted here on behalf of etoys.

Updating our etoys translation today, I encountered an extremely long string. I won't quote it here, since it's two-and-a-half pages long on my screen in a text editor, but it's string 1225 in Pootle, and starts like this in the PO file:

_____
#: Morphic-Flaps,Flaps_class>>explainFlapsText
msgid ""
"Flaps are like drawers on the edge of the screen, which can be opened so that you can use what is inside them, and closed when you do not need them.  They have many possible uses, a few of which are illustrated by the default set of flaps you can get as described below.\n"
...
_____

Please divide this enormous string into paragraphs, one paragraph per translation string. Ideally, a translation string should not be more than one or two sentences long. However, most of the paragraphs in this multi-page string are reasonably short and independent: they will translate effectively as standalone strings.

(Reminder for developers: long strings are bad localization practice! Translators avoid them, since they have very little time available (thus you don't get the translation); there's much more room for error and confusion (so you get bad translations); translators can't review the string properly (more errors); and finally, most translation editors don't expect long strings, so they don't handle them well (confused and grumpy translators).

If you do ask for translations of your Help or docs, you can use the conversion package po4a to serve your data up as translatable strings. The Translate Toolkit also handles some doc formats.)

from Clytie 

Vietnamese Free Software Translation Team