From: Eric Sunshine Date: Tue, 23 Sep 2025 18:16:13 GMT Subject: Re: format-patch: why are the Range-diff: and Interdiff: headers translated? Message-ID: In-Reply-To: <3945bf06-ba04-4ecb-887e-0f3a76e1c2f8@app.fastmail.com> On Tue, Sep 23, 2025 at 12:54 PM Kristoffer Haugsbakk wrote: > git-format-patch(1) has had translated strings for `Range-diff:` and > `Interdiff:` since they were introduced.[1][2][3] > > // Example > _("Interdiff against v%d: ... > > Is that how translated/l10n Git is supposed to to work? I get > translating errors and such—that’s for the user. But a Colombian user > might send out patches to an international email list. Why should their > own translated UI (again, if I’m understanding l10n correctly) affect > the patch output? Making these translatable was deliberate. As I recall, I had been able to formulate arguments in favor of both making them translatable and making them non-translatable, though I no longer remember what those arguments were. One argument in favor may have been that (a) the titles "Interdiff" & "Range-diff" are meant for human readers, not for machine consumption, and (b) there may very well be non-English-centric projects (open-source or not) using a patch-based workflow. I further recall that I was expecting pushback from reviewers and was surprised when there was none. Hence, those titles remained translatable in the final version. As far as I recall, this is only the second time in the intervening years that someone has questioned why the titles are translatable. If your reason for posing this question is that you believe the titles should not be translatable and you wish to submit a patch series to rectify that, then you won't get pushback from me. Also, in support of such a proposal, I do recall (though can't find the email) that Junio once pushed back years ago against someone proposing to make the diffstat "x file changed, y insertions(+), z deletions(-)" summary translatable.