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As pointed out in the question "How to make users aware that they're reading translated content?", some users navigate with auto-translation turned on. In principle I don't see it as a big problem, however Google does us the favor of translating code fragments too, you know, to help us better... While an attentive user will notice the wrong keywords, translated API names can still be a source of confusion.

I suggest adding the notranslate class to all generated code blocks. I dunno how hard such a thing would be (since it involves the markdown engine), and I understand this should be very low in SE priority list, but I'm still suggesting it just in case (since it's way narrower than dealing with whole page translations - and straightforward to fix too, since the complication of nesting elements does not apply to the code element as used here).

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  • Wouldn't this make it even less obvious to the user that they are looking at a translated site? What about comments in code? And finally, what problem does this actually solve? – balpha Jan 31 '13 at 13:39
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    @balpha if certain keywords are translated the code can break – ajax333221 Jan 31 '13 at 20:24
  • @balpha 1) if the goal is to draw attention to the translation, then yes, it's a step back; 2) in this case an imperfect translation is worse than no translation at all IMHO, so the code comments are best left untranslated too; 3) well, I have some "english impaired" co-workers, and often I send them links to SO questions in response to requests of helping them with some task. I don't expect them to contribute back to SE, but just to read the links and apply the solution to their problem. "Broken" code makes these resources less useful in this case. As I said, edge case, but suggesting anyway. – mgibsonbr Jan 31 '13 at 21:05

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