translations need some love

[memo33]

The translations are a bit out of sync. There are several "fuzzy" entries where the translations don't match the English version anymore. Ideally, someone would check and update those fuzzy entries, at least.

See https://github.com/NAMTeam/Network-Addon-Mod/tree/staging/ltext

[jflann]

We should update the LTEXT contribution guide to add a note about reviewing the .po files for fuzzy entries following an LTEXT synchronization. We should also be a bit more diligent about not allowing updates to the .pot files without synchronization of the .po files as occurred in #526

Both would go a long way towards making sure these don't get too out of sync and cause a headache for those tasked with sorting through and deciding what's the correct string.

[memo33]

There's something I maybe don't fully understand about the "fuzzy" entries. I think they indicate where an old translation does not match an updated English LText anymore. They're generally undesirable, but there's not a lot one can do about them, as they can only be deleted by the translator after bringing the translation up to date. That's why in #551 I left all the fuzzy entries in place after synchronization.

[jflann]

The problem I see with the fuzzy matching is that it's not intelligent enough to consider the msgctxt (which we populate with instance id) to perform the matching properly. It finds one that is close enough and inserts it. This is a problem because the fuzzy matches are suggesting that the template has been revised but it may just be a different string entirely. So the translator needs to be diligent in checking that the fuzzy match is true. IMO this is better done upon synchronization rather than at translation time because the person updating the source texts knows the true changes and can more easily clean up the bad fuzzy matches.

[memo33]

I see what you mean. We can add --no-fuzzy-matching to the synchronization script:

Network-Addon-Mod/ltext/synchronize-translations.sh

Line 12 in 7d0d62d

msgmerge --update --previous --no-wrap --backup=off --quiet "$pofile" "$potfile"

The effect will be that if an English LText is updated, all the translations will be erased and set to "". Hence, the ground truth from the English LText will be displayed in game.

Currently, with the fuzzy matches, we have this situation: The "FLUPs" button was split into "FLUPs ramps", "FLUPs under roads", "FLUPs under rails", etc. Due to the fuzzy matching, the translations are all set to the translation of the original "FLUPs" button, without the ramps/roads/rails part. This can be confusing when it ends up in the game.

On the other hand, erasing a translation means we lose earlier work, i.e. a translation that was ~90% correct.