Re: [PATCH 4/4 v2] sequencer: spell out command names and do not translate them

[Johannes Schindelin <Johannes.Schindelin@gmx.de>]

Hi Michael & Junio,

On Fri, 19 Aug 2022, Michael J Gruber wrote:

> When we talk about sequencer action names as such we do translate the
> action name. In all cases, we talk about the like-named git command
> name, though, which is not translated.
>
> In order to make the correspondence clearer, reword those error messages
> to use the (untranslated) git command name, and adjust the po README to
> match the code base.
>
> Signed-off-by: Michael J Gruber <git@grubix.eu>
> ---
> I guess there are two extreme views regarding these cases (in terms of
> how much to translate) and a few in between. v2 here implements the
> one of these. As a result, we don't need to N_()-mark the action names
> any more unless I'm overlooking something. I'm holding this back until
> the consensus is clear.

Thank you for being careful.

In general, I would like to leave the decision whether or not to mention
the _English_ word for an operation (or whether to treat the error
message's prefix as a short-hand for the Git command) to the l10n
maintainer, so that things can be consistent between translations.

Ciao,
Dscho

> Overall, we are not consistent with the prefixes in our error messages
> (command or not) nor the capitalisation. One could say that at the point
> of an error/die worse has gone wrong than the wording, of course ;)
>
>  po/README.md | 2 +-
>  sequencer.c  | 8 ++++----
>  2 files changed, 5 insertions(+), 5 deletions(-)
>
> diff --git a/po/README.md b/po/README.md
> index 3e4f897d93..7b7ad24412 100644
> --- a/po/README.md
> +++ b/po/README.md
> @@ -273,7 +273,7 @@ General advice:
>
>    ```c
>    /* TRANSLATORS: %s will be "revert" or "cherry-pick" */
> -  die(_("%s: Unable to write new index file"), action_name(opts));
> +  die(_("git %s: unable to write new index file"), action_name(opts));
>    ```
>
>  We provide wrappers for C, Shell and Perl programs. Here's how they're
> diff --git a/sequencer.c b/sequencer.c
> index 79dad522f5..c26dc46268 100644
> --- a/sequencer.c
> +++ b/sequencer.c
> @@ -539,8 +539,8 @@ static int error_dirty_index(struct repository *repo, struct replay_opts *opts)
>  	if (repo_read_index_unmerged(repo))
>  		return error_resolve_conflict(action_name(opts));
>
> -	error(_("your local changes would be overwritten by %s."),
> -		_(action_name(opts)));
> +	error(_("git %s: your local changes would be overwritten"),
> +		action_name(opts)));
>
>  	if (advice_enabled(ADVICE_COMMIT_BEFORE_MERGE))
>  		advise(_("commit your changes or stash them to proceed."));
> @@ -725,8 +725,8 @@ static int do_recursive_merge(struct repository *r,
>  		 * TRANSLATORS: %s will be "revert", "cherry-pick" or
>  		 * "rebase".
>  		 */
> -		return error(_("%s: Unable to write new index file"),
> -			_(action_name(opts)));
> +		return error(_("git %s: unable to write new index file"),
> +			action_name(opts));
>
>  	if (!clean)
>  		append_conflicts_hint(r->index, msgbuf,
> --
> 2.37.2.653.g5b2587383a
>
>