Re: i18n/gettext?

[Paul Eggert]

> Date: Sun, 9 Dec 2001 20:01:05 -0700 (MST)
> From: Richard Stallman <address@hidden>
> 
> We could put something somewhere to remind people not to enter translations
> for those strings.

I did that in my experiment with GNU tar.  I put comments just before
the strings in the source, in such a way that the comments also
appeared just before the strings in the translation files.  It didn't
work.  The translators didn't see the comments, or didn't understand
them, and went ahead and translated the strings anyway.

> There are just a few strings in startup.el which should not be
> translated for this reason.  Maybe we could mark them specifically
> for non-translation.

That would be a better approach -- i.e. don't let the human
translators see the strings in the first place.