What is Internationalization?
Internationalization is the process of developing the codebase so that it can easily be translated into other languages. Internationalization is often abbreviated as i18n (because there are 18 letters between the i and the n).
Topics for this handbook page:
- Singular/plural forms; explain, that singular isn’t always used for 1 item
- Translator comments for placeholders, requirement
- Explain difference between context and translator comments
- Escaping
- Avoid HTMLHTML HyperText Markup Language. The semantic scripting language primarily used for outputting content in web browsers. in strings if possible
- Use HTML entities for dashes (
—) and apostrophes (’)
Localization
Avoid fragmented or ‘patchwork’ messages
Languages have varying word orders, and complex grammatical and syntactic rules. “Lego” messages, put together from lots of pieces of text, possibly with some indirection, are very hard or impossible to translate.
It is better to make every message a complete sentence, each with a full stop at the end. Several sentences can usually be combined much more easily be into a text blockBlock Block is the abstract term used to describe units of markup that, composed together, form the content or layout of a webpage using the WordPress editor. The idea combines concepts of what in the past may have achieved with shortcodes, custom HTML, and embed discovery into a single consistent API and user experience., if needed.
Use full stops
Do terminate normal sentences with full stops. This is often the only indicator for a translator to know that they are not headlines or list items, which may need to be translated differently.
