Re: use translation context for translations of in-document strings?

[Gavin Smith]

On Sat, Nov 05, 2022 at 05:25:07PM +0100, Patrice Dumas wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> It will become possible to add translation context to in-document
> translated strings in developments to come.  I am not sure in which
> situations it will be better to use contexts to be clearer on the
> intended use of a translated string.  In particular there are, for HTML,
> many direction strings translations that can be used in different
> contexts and may have the same words to translate.  For example,
> 'Index' is translated in 3 different contexts:
> * to represent a button label,
> * as a short text for the direction,
> * or as the longer direction description

Are there translators who would translate "Index" in more than one
way in some language?

> Another context that could be added when there is some translation would
> be to give an idea on the command being associated with the translation,
> or the class of command.  For example there is '{number} {section_title}'
> to be translated, which is for a section number, I am not sure that
> '{number} {section_title}' is explicit, maybe adding a context, like
> 'sectioning command' would be better.

If translators need more advice then it is possible to put comments
next to translated strings.  This is done with the -c option of
xgettext; see e.g. Info node '(gettext)Bug Report Address' and
XGETTEXT_OPTIONS in po/Makefile.

I'm not sure if there is a problem with strings like '{number} {section_title}'
but if there was, do you think these comments would be good enough?