Dear Holger
I have read your e-mail of 17 October 2019, in which you asked me two questions about my Dutch translation for win32-loader. Your questions are only about the following part of my translation. SOURCE TEXT Base URL for netboot images (linux and initrd.gz): TRANSLATION [Laat een basale URL het gedeelte van een URL zijn dat gemeenschappelijk is voor alle bestanden van een server. Laat een netwerk-opstart-image een archiefbestand zijn dat een bestandssysteem bevat waarmee een computer kan worden opgestart via een netwerk. --vertaler]\n \n Geef de basale URL voor de netwerk-opstart-images (linux en initrd.gz): YOUR QUESTIONS You wrote that I had added a somewhat longer text to a string that is short in English. You asked me whether I had checked that the resulting long text will be correctly displayed by the program. You also thought of the text as being displayed in a small box and asked me whether that assumption is correct. ANSWER TO YOUR FIRST QUESTION I did not check that the translation will be correctly displayed by the program. However, checking the correct display of a translation is not my responsibility. My responsibility is to provide the best possible translation that complies with the translation instructions. In the case of the above-mentioned translation, a translation instruction was not given by the programmers. This means that I had complete freedom in devising the best translation. The characteristics of a perfect translation are many. One of them is full usability for the purpose specified in the translation instructions. When translation instructions are not provided, a translator simply aims for maximum usefulness of the translation itself for the target audience. The correct display of a translation is the responsibility of the programmers. The programmers can choose to use a text area with a vertical scrollbar so that a translation will always fit, or they can provide a translation instruction to make sure that a translation will fit in the available space. The matter is not of my concern. ANSWER TO YOUR SECOND QUESTION I do not know whether the above translation is displayed in a small box. 'Base URL for netboot images (linux and initrd.gz):' was found in 'work/l10n/win32-loader.c'. This file uses a function 'langstring' that seems to be used in connection with nsis. The website of nsis has a page about a message box. See https://nsis.sourceforge.io/Reference/MessageBox . It is not clear whether this message box has a vertical scrollbar that appears automatically when needed. A procedure 'MessageBox' is called in 7 files in 'work' and their names end with '.nsi'. The function 'langstring' seems to relate 'Base URL for netboot images (linux and initrd.gz):' to 'custom5'. 'custom5' can also be found in the file 'work/custom.nsi'. It contains '${NSD_CreateLabel} 0u 48u -3u 8u $(custom5)'. I cannot understand that code, however. SUMMARY You asked me whether I had checked that a long translation will be correctly displayed by win32-loader. I did not check that. However, checking the correct display of a translation is not my responsibility. You also asked me whether the translation is displayed in a small box. I do not know that and I am not able to find that out. CONCLUSION Your questions have been answered. With kind regards Maarten member of the Dutch translation team of Debian
