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I've encountered this phrase while participating in a translation of Stack Overflow to another language. There is no additional info in the translation interface.

I can't understand the context of "Switch Users On $siteName$".

The literal meaning of the current translation is: "turn on/enable users on $siteName$". Does it sound right?

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  • Where did you see that?
    – ProgramFOX
    Commented Mar 8, 2015 at 14:01
  • @ProgramFOX: There are list of phrases to be translated. It is one of them. No context given of where or how it is used on the site.
    – jfs
    Commented Mar 8, 2015 at 14:09
  • Oh, I see. Do you have a link to this list?
    – ProgramFOX
    Commented Mar 8, 2015 at 14:11
  • @ProgramFOX: The list is accessible only by translators as far as I can see. Though there is nothing to see. It is the full phrase. Nothing else is shown.
    – jfs
    Commented Mar 8, 2015 at 14:15
  • Which site are you working on?
    – user50049
    Commented Mar 8, 2015 at 14:37
  • @TimPost Stack Overflow in Russian Translation
    – jfs
    Commented Mar 8, 2015 at 14:38
  • Ah found it, string 5017. I think that's an obscure thing that only shows up in developer tools, let me look at what's near it.
    – user50049
    Commented Mar 8, 2015 at 14:41
  • @TimPost: yes. It is correct. It is #5017.
    – jfs
    Commented Mar 8, 2015 at 14:41
  • @Tim nope. Looks like it appears to ordinary users as well, as mentioned here. (maybe when merging accounts?)
    – Shadow Wizard
    Commented Mar 8, 2015 at 14:42
  • Sure 'nuff is. It's something folks see when their accounts meet criteria for self-service merging. And uh, I still have no context for it. Ugh.
    – user50049
    Commented Mar 8, 2015 at 14:55

1 Answer 1

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We're working on getting some context based on the original English string, where you can just search for the English phrase and see what pages it appears on. Not perfect, but it's a start.

I believe that particular string is somewhere in a moderator tool in the recently introduced self-service account action feature , though I can't quite find it. If you encounter a situation where you just can't find context to translate you can (1) skip it or (2) skip it and open an issue in Transifex asking for context.

Don't worry too much about skipping if unsure, as the translation progresses and people begin using the site, they will quickly report strings still in English and where they were found - nothing that people actually see will go untranslated for long.

Since the place where this shows up is complicated, and all strings associated with it are extremely difficult to understand out of the context of the UI itself, we're going to go ahead and test the self-service account actions just to make sure the wording is right:

enter image description here

This is one place that we don't want to get it horribly wrong, because it lets users do things to their accounts that is a bit of a pain to undo :)

Thank you for helping with translations, especially on a weekend!

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  • I've left the comment marked as an issue there. I don't know whether it raises the issue by itself. The phrase has the translation already. I don't want to revert it unless I'm sure that the translation is wrong.
    – jfs
    Commented Mar 8, 2015 at 14:55
  • I'm going to stick a card on our translation Trello board to test self-service account actions in order to make sure the wording on all sites makes sense. Thanks for bringing this up.
    – user50049
    Commented Mar 8, 2015 at 14:56
  • The linked question suggests that the translation is wrong i.e., the meaning is closer to "change users", not "enable users" as it is now. Thank you for trying to shed some light on it.
    – jfs
    Commented Mar 8, 2015 at 15:03
  • I suspect it's probably wrong to varying degrees on Portuguese, Japanese and Spanish as well. We'll take it from here :)
    – user50049
    Commented Mar 8, 2015 at 15:05
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    So that's how you translate everything... I was really wondering. :)
    – Shadow Wizard
    Commented Mar 8, 2015 at 15:09
  • @ShadowWizard Yeah, well, that's how we just settled into doing it (Transifex). Prior to that we had some internal stuff, but we're not really interested in building a whole translation engine, yet we really needed one, so we used people that invested a ton of time into getting that right. It's still very much a rough-around-the-edges process and far from being settled.
    – user50049
    Commented Mar 8, 2015 at 15:47
  • What languages are you translating into? Just the SO variants, or all the languages that existing sites and site in commitment are requesting? In particular, how's French coming along?
    – Gilles 'SO- stop being evil'
    Commented Mar 8, 2015 at 16:11
  • @Gilles Languages where there's a strong number of people that would love to use the site, but aren't particularly likely to take on a second language in order to do so, or simply uncomfortable participating in anything other than their native language. Initially: Portuguese, Japanese, Russian. Spanish comes after that, and then (possibly) more in decreasing order of the size of the possible user base that isn't already happily participating in English. Stack Overflow only for now, and the foreseeable future, but who knows as we start getting better and better at crowd-sourcing translations.
    – user50049
    Commented Mar 8, 2015 at 16:16
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    This is disappointing. When I joined French Language, internationalization support was still a way away but in the plans. Years later, there are now technical solutions — you have a translation framework that allows users to interact with the sites in languages other than English — and yet the only progress for language sites is that non-ASCII characters are supported in tags. Why aren't you letting language sites get a native interface?
    – Gilles 'SO- stop being evil'
    Commented Mar 8, 2015 at 17:16
  • @Gilles The key there is autonomous crowd-sourced translations. We're working now on Stack Overflow, and progressing, but we're nowhere close to being able to provide a site like French the means for the community to translate the site themselves. In order for the translated strings to appear, a build has to happen (because so much stuff that goes into a build has to be refreshed) - this is why every site we're currently working on has a dedicated CM. My goal when we finish this effort is a system where we can easily let communities just do this themselves, but we're so early yet.
    – user50049
    Commented Mar 8, 2015 at 19:25
  • It is extremely difficult to reverse an assertion that software will not ever need to be translated after many decisions have been made based on that assertion. We're doing it, and we have sites up soon in 5 languages counting English. I can't emphasize enough how much progress that means. I don't want to disappoint you, but we're not as far as you might have inferred.
    – user50049
    Commented Mar 8, 2015 at 19:28
  • Tim can you please take a look here? I thought it was only manual process but learned from this answer it's automated.
    – Shadow Wizard
    Commented Mar 8, 2015 at 19:54
  • @ShadowWizard It's sometimes automated, if you're still able to access both accounts (which is broadly possible as we also point to how to recover even cookie-based accounts). The whole log in / recovery / merge / deletion process is undergoing a series of improvements. I don't think it will ever be fully automatic for everyone, but we're trying to make it simpler for common cases.
    – user50049
    Commented Mar 8, 2015 at 20:05
  • @Tim thanks, so what about choosing the account that will stay? Is it possible?
    – Shadow Wizard
    Commented Mar 8, 2015 at 20:07

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