Should we translate error messages?

Should we translate error messages?

Postby acme_pjz » 22 Feb 2013, 14:32

I read some articles on the Internet and they said that error messages displayed in terminal shouldn't be translated, because it's a huge task and the usefulness... In recent svn changes the Lua error messages are prefixed by '_', which means they are translatable. But old error messages are not translatable, except those who displayed on game screen. So my question is should we translate error messages? I think we shouldn't :| Any ideas?
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Re: Should we translate error messages?

Postby Edward_Lii » 22 Feb 2013, 15:17

Hello acme_pjz,

acme_pjz {l Wrote}:I read some articles on the Internet and they said that error messages displayed in terminal shouldn't be translated, because it's a huge task and the usefulness... In recent svn changes the Lua error messages are prefixed by '_', which means they are translatable. But old error messages are not translatable, except those who displayed on game screen. So my question is should we translate error messages? I think we shouldn't :| Any ideas?

I agree, the lua errors were set translatable because I simply saw them as a string that is outputted to the user, forgetting the fact that it ends up in terminal.
There are many reason not to translate them and almost none to translate them.

As you've already said the translating takes time, but also searching for the error message becomes harder and we have to "translate" the strings back in order to help users.
I will remove the '_' prefix and update the messages.pot for pecolmar (translated into Czech). ;)
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