J’avoue n’avoir jamais pensé qu’un logiciel pouvait s’exprimer en tant que tel.
Ce n’est pas vraiment déconnant. Par exemple : qui indiquerais les messages d’erreurs aux admins ?
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This is highly controversial. Don’t get me wrong: I’d rather agree with you. But I don’t see any benefits for the Discourse community to take side in feminist militancy.
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Well, not taking sides is taking sides.
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Warning: this is getting off topic.
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Lots of fixes and changes were included in the last 2 or 3 beta versions. Let me know if you find an issue or a change that you disagree with.
This is the main challenge. I would say the best is to stick with the glossary and existing translations, even if we don’t fully agree with them. Just like developers should follow the coding style of the project they just joined.
However, Transifex is not helping here: its “Suggestions” tab is showing old or deleted translations that are no longer relevant… Hopefully the new platform will help ensuring consistency over time.
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Hi, could someone please point me to the French project glossary, if such a document is available in that language? 
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Hi,
The French glossary is quite empty since the project was moved from Transifex to Crowdin (the glossary was not moved over). In the Crowdin interface, the right panel has a tab called “Terms” which lists known terms for the current string. A lot of terms are not translated in French so feel free to update the list based on existing translations.
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Hello,
As some might have noticed, I’ve begun to participate in the French translation work. It’s only been a couple of weeks—and I realize it isn’t much in the context of a software project of this scale—but I nonetheless would like to initiate discussion on possible ways to improve the existing French UI.
To this end, and while trying to start small, or at least start with a limited scope, here are approximately 20 terms or phrases for which I would like to suggest specific substitutions, or to as for opinions and suggestions. Which are in welcome in any case, I should add. I am aware that most of these substitutions would require pretty sweeping changes to be made, which is another reason why I think they are worthy of being discussed–I won’t just start suggesting hundreds of commits in Crowdsource on my own.
So here is a list of terms and phrases which I think are not conducive to the seamless, cognitively non-disturbing user experience that Discourse could provide. Basically, they either do not match existing software lexicon that French-speaking users expect to see, or they sound clunky (at least to my ears), or they sound less than clear, or sometimes ambiguous.
Common User Experience
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tags: étiquettes feels wrong. Software like Gmail uses libellés.
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direct message: I believe this is linguo that originated in Twitter, but message direct is not a term that’s used, I would suggest message privé.
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DM: similarly, nobody I know can parse “MD”, the commonly used abbreviation is “MP”.
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to silence (a user): mettre sous silence is gibberish (sorry). Ignorer seems to me like the way to go
Twitter uses masquer, which I think is a poor choice. -
silenced: mis sous silence is equally weird, ignoré would be better.
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to mute (a topic, a category) : mettre sous silence still doesn’t sound right, here. For television sets, the idiom is mettre en sourdine, but this will sound dated at best. I believe ignorer is the usual term, although it’s mostly applied to users. Perhaps masquer would sit well in this case.
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to watch (a topic, a tag, etc.) : surveiller has been adopted. It works somewhat but does not feel entirely natural. Suivre would have sounded more natural, but it is used for to track. Suggestions are especially welcome here.
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to track (a topic, a tag, etc.) : suivre has been adopted. Perhaps it could be alterned to something in the field of “subscribing” : s’abonner, s’abonner au sujet, etc., as I believe this is used is other software. Suggestions are especially welcome here. I should also put more research into it…
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staff, staff member: responsables is a little off. (With a colleague, we jokingly described this as “too McDonald’s sounding,” iow: is has the ring of petty management). To match the friendly tone that characterizes Discourse, I would suggest l’équipe or l’équipe du forum (“the team,” “the forum team”)
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to dismiss (notifications) : ignorer is wrong. Marquer comme lu or Marquer comme vu is what users expect (Facebook reads: Tout marquer comme lu) , but there will probably be a string length problem in the notification pane, here. Perhaps Vu? Perhaps with an added “check mark” emoji, or some other visual hint?
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read (mark notifications as read) : ignorer is wrong.
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read (read topic) : the literal translation lu isn’t great, as it’s not evocative enough in some contexts. Marqué comme lu would be too reminiscent of e-mail clients, and of all the formality is rigidity of e-mail. I would recommened either consulté or parcouru, which are closer in meaning to “have been looked at.”
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Top (top topics) : Top isn’t great, especially in the context of a full sentence (such as “There are no more top topics.”) It’s more suitable as a one-word button. What would really register for a lot of French persons would be something like Top 10, Top 20 (not Top 50 though, that refers to record sales charts!) For full sentences I would recommend: classement, and perhaps more explicit variants depending on context : classement par succès, classement par nombre de vues, etc.
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to save (user preferences, drafts, invitations): this is sometimes translated as sauvegarder (“to back up” which sounds overblown) instead of enregistrer (which is what users expect), I’m suggesting the use of enregistrer be made consistent (except in cases of actual site backups)
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featured topic: sujet vedette is parseable, but sounds very off, as it belongs to the lexical field of show business. (Mis en avant or "mis en exergue would be equally inappropriate). Suggesting Sujet du moment, (“present-time topic,” implicitely: favorite topic as of now) or (more common, perhaps a bit too dull, I believe I’ve seen this on older discussion boards) Sujet préféré (“favorite subject”). Or maybe Sujet phare, but that’s also a bit off in my view (it would mean flagship topic).
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to like, likes: this is one of the tougher, as every French person is in the habit of using the English word (same goes for tags, e-mail and uploads, by the way, but that’s a topic for another day, because French Canadians will beg to differ…) It seems the current translation is J’aime (with a systematic capital J). I would suggest the systematic use of (French-style) quotes instead:* « j’aime »* (or « J’aime »). (This term also causes an issue for users of the
discourse-reactionsplugins, which turns likes into reactions, but that’s certainly out of scope here.) -
reminder: rappel might not be the best choice, as it sometimes leads to undecipherable strings, such as rappel de signet for “bookmark reminder”. In other contexts, it works better (as in the case of planifier un rappel to mean “schedule a reminder”), although it still feels imperfect, as it’s both a bit too formal, and also ambiguous (it’s often meant to refer to phone calls). I believe alerte is commonly used for scheduled notifications.
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panel: (as in : a section of a UI, a pane) : should not be panneau. This one is difficult to translate and I personally try to work around it with ellipses: ici (“here”), cet espace (“this area”), etc.
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to suspend: suspendre is imperfect (in French, an account is suspended, but not a person, not a user), but everybody understands and it has begun to permeate the language anyway. It’s low-priority, but there is room for improvement in some of the strings.
Moderator-related
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to review: vérifier is wrong and barely understandable. Approuver is a tad better, but still possibly misleading in some phrasings. I recommend examiner. Passer en revue might work better in some contexts, too, as it is more descriptive.
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reviewable (item): similarly, anything revolving around vérifier does not feel right to me. Perhaps élément à examiner. Depends a lot of context, I’ve worked around one of them with a more natural-sounding result by translating “Reviewable user rejected” to L’ inscription de cet utilisateur a été refusée (“This user’s account creation was unapproved,” basically.)
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approval queue: file d’attente pour approbation makes some sense, but it is far from sounding natural. File de modération sounds a bit more natural, albeit not much more descriptive. Suggestions are welcome, as always.
Admin-related
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secret (as in : shared secret for authentication purposes) : clé secrete reads much better than “phrase secrète”. (I actually took the liberty of committing that change to Crowdsource already, but I thought I should mention it.)
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user onboarding: I committed conseils d’intégration aux nouveaux utilisateurs in one place, suggesting this be generalized to two other strings (very slight change, only a preposition)
And that’s about it.
To finish: I voluntarily left a lot of things open-ended and up for brainstorming here however my intent is not to rest on other translators for decision making, and I don’t wish to burden anyone with extra responsibility. If it were needed or preferred, I would be able, prepared and willing to do some more research by examining more existing software, and to make some of these calls myself.
Thank you to the people involved in this effort 
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My two cents:
I finally got some of my users to understand tags, I’m not sure libellés would have helped. When I talked with them I think étiquettes was closer to something physical (clothes tags) then easier to apprehend for a taxonomy structure, but why not.
Is there still a rationale for direct message then ?
Is there a subtlety between to silence and to ignore that would be missed by Ignorer ? Faire taire ? makes my ears bleed a little but 
There should be a gradation between those two (with normal as baseline), I think I like this couple, suivre, surveiller.
Hum… l’équipe feels very sports connoted. Team members are more likely to be TL4 than staff I think, or differently put, shouldn’t we be able to be team but not staff ?
Maybe something in the field of balayer ?
Ok I guess, but which contexts are you referring to?
So do you suggest Classés ?
yes 
Hum yes… vedette 
Sujet star would probably be too bold. Tête d’affiche ?
I prefer rappel I think, for bookmark reminder, I’m not sure alerte de signet would be less undecipherable.
I’m kind of missing the simple relire, Après relecture… but I agree.
Is the implicit d’attente enough ? File en attente de review ?
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Hi,
Thanks Lucas for raising these points!
Here are additional thoughts:
Initially “tags” was left untranslated in French as it can be understood by most people familiar with the web. You can probably still find the discussion about the change to “étiquette”. I think it could be confusing to change it again.
I think the point was that these messages are not really private since staff members are able to see them. But I agree that “message privé” is more common, even though “privé” is misleading in this case
There are different concepts here:
- a user can ignore notifications coming from another user
- an admin can silence a user so that he is not able to post new messages
We probably can’t use “ignorer” for both cases.
“Ignorer” sounds good here. It would be consistent with the other notification levels that are also verbs (“suivre”, “surveiller”).
I think the French translations have the correct gradation here. I would find the difference between “suivre” and “s’abonner” unclear.
“L’équipe” would work I think.
I agree that “ignorer” is a bit off, though it is understandable. I found an existing translation that says “Marquer toutes les notifications comme lues” so maybe we can go in that direction. However, dismissing a notification does not mean the content of the notification was actually read.
I think there are multiple gradations here in the context of Discourse. You can open a topic but not read every posts. In that case “consulté” would mean you opened the topic but does not imply all posts were read. I think the difference should be made here.
Yes, “top” is difficult to translate effectively I found. How would you translate "There are no more top topics” using “classement”?
“Sujet préféré” sounds good I think. Or maybe “Sujet sélectionné”?
I think the current translation with a capital J is OK. It would be very noisy to add quotes around this word.
Yes, I think people understand that. Not sure there is a better translation that’s also clearer.
Yes, “examiner” would be good here.
Is this referring to “passphrase”? Because “phrase secrète” seems to be the correct expression:
Most of these propositions are reasonable. The difficulty is to apply them consistently and everywhere which could be quite some work.
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Thank you for your involvement.
@zogstrip, perhaps you’d want to have a say here?
Given your approval, I went along and changed all relevant occurrences of sauvegarder/sauvegardé to enregistrer/enregistré.
Detail : I worked that verb out of a single string : js.composer.composer_actions.reply_as_new_topic.confirm (“You have a new topic draft saved, which will be overwritten if you create a linked topic,” which I changed to “Vos brouillons contiennent un nouveau sujet en cours d’écriture. Ce brouillon sera perdu si vous créez un sujet lié.”)
I’ll also go ahead and commit “examiner” for “to review,” given that we seem to agree on it as well.
Using Crowdin’s search feature made it easier. Although previous translations are also indexed, which causes searches by translation to yield more results that one may expect, but it’s good enough. Taking into account my tweaking the grammar and phrasing in some adjacent strings, and a final double-checking, it took me about an hour.
That’s a valid point. Although a whole lot of sites use equally misleading terms. Perhaps we could go with message personnel instead ? it’s uncommon in software, but it would be much less of a misrepresentation–although still somewhat misleading: in legal terms, what’s personnel on a computer system is distinct from what’s privatif or privé, however, few people know this.
At the cost of an extra syllable, message individuel would be slightly less misleading–I’m using the word “slightly” because I honestly believe that a solid 90% of pretty much any user base would not suspect a difference in meaning between any of these phrasings.
Agreed, we can’t.
If a user-level ignore only blocks out notifications, than masquer is even more out of the question.
How about: “ignorer” for users wanting to ignore notifications coming from specific users, and “silencier” for the admin use case of silencing a user? It’s a rare verb, but it’s featured in classical dictionaries and was never totally abandonned. I also think it’s resurgent, or bound to be, due to the increased use of its English counterpart to silence in politicized speech nowadays. In fact, I just found out that the go-to modern French dictionary just decided to feature it in its next edition.
(“Faire taire” gave me a chuckle. “Réduire au silence” would also be awkwardly funny 
)
This seems to be the consensus. It’s good enough.
I agree there is a sports connotation when the term is used on its own (without “du forum” as a way to qualifier). This might indeed have a weird ring to people who follow sports more than I do. (And now that I think of it, “l’équipe” also has a McDonlaldsy feeling to it, they call their employees ‘équipiers’ )
Plus sérieusement, this depends a lot on context. I’ve seen an message template in which “Our staff” was translated to “Notre équipe”, which feels adequate there. ( discourse_narrative_bot.new_user_narrative.flag.reply)
There doesn’t seem to be such a distinction in the English strings, though. In fact, there seems to be an implication that staff members include moderators, so the distinction would stand between staff at large and administrators.
At least, this seems implied in js.post.controls.convert_to_moderator (emphasis on moderator) and js.post.controls.revert_to_regular, which read “Add Staff Color” and “Remove Staff Color” respectively, while also using the term “modérateurs” instead of "responsables" in their French translations.
I have a feeling this discussion would benefit from involving more core developers.
I’m not a fan of balayer, it’s too literal. The closest French idiom would be “Écarter d’un revers de la main,” which would be absurd here.
Wouldn’t it blow up the button label length to uncanny proportions, though?
Good point. So “ignorer” made some sense, in a way, and using the verb “lire” or “lu” would be somewhat misleading. That makes me favor “(marquer (comme)) lu 
” more. [edited]
“rappel” might in fact be more parseable in such a context, yes. Although this entire strings needs to be rephrased. I’ll work on it…
I’ll have to take a closer look at it to get back to you on this point…
Goodness, no! Maybe “Classement”. But it’s less evocative than Top. This seems low-prio, though.
I’d go for “Il n’y a plus de sujets à lire dans ce classement”.
I wasn’t aware of that. I’ll revert my changes.
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In the same 
vein: Ventiler, Disperser
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After taking a closer look, I’m walking back on what I wrote here. The word “passphrase” is never used in Discourse, only “secret” (secret values, secret key, domain-secret paris, secret string, client secret, Twitter consumer secret, Facebook app secret, Github client secret, Google OAuth secret, Amazon AWS S3 secret access key, Mailgun secret API key, DiscourseConnect secret). In some instances, the use of whitespace characters is forbidden, which doesn’t seem consistent with such a string being a passphrase. Thus,“clé secrete” seems more suited here.
Another thing to consider is that the current “message direct” concept also includes group messages and messages to multiple users. So “personnel” or “individuel” might not work here.
Did you mean “(marquer (comme)) vu”?
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Yes, that’s what I meant. (D’oh)
Thank you for pointing out the groups recipient and multiple recipient possibilities of DM, I wasn’t aware of these features. Indeed, this causes the “personnel” or “individuel” qualifiers to be improper. I’m out of other ideas for the moment.
I finished inserting “examiner” in review-relateded strings. I’ve made a few exceptions to the rules which I’ll list here; they are mostly system message, either in DM or e-mail form:
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system_messages.queued_posts_reminder.text_body_template(“Posts from new users were held for moderation and are currently waiting to be reviewed.” → “Des messages de nouveaux utilisateurs sont en attente de modération.”) -
system_messages.unsilenced.text_body_template(“This is an automated message from %{site_name} to let you know that your account is no longer on hold after staff review.” → “Ceci est un message automatique de %{site_name} pour vous informer que les restrictions sur votre compte ont été levées suite à l’intervention d’un responsable.”) -
system_messages.spam_post_blocked.text_body_template(“Please review the user” → “Nous vous invitons à examiner la situation de cet utilisateur”) -
system_messages.ignored_users_summary.text_body_template(same as above) -
reviewables.reasons.queued_by_staff(“A staff member thinks this post needs review. It’ll remain hidden until then.” → “Un responsable a estimé que ce message devait être examiné avant sa publication. Il restera masqué jusqu’à son approbation par un modérateur.”)
Also, I’ve seen a few other strings where the verb “approuver” would sound more natural than “examiner”. Some I think should be left alone for consistency’s sake, especially in site settings and in the admin area more generally. But some, directed toward users, could perhaps be tweaked to make for a more fluid user experience:
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system_messages.queued_by_staff.text_body_template(“Your post will remain hidden until a staff member reviews it.” could be “Votre message restera masqué jusqu’à ce qu’un responsable en prenne connaissance et approuve sa publication.”) -
system_messages.too_many_tl3_flags.text_body_template (“Your new account has been silenced from creating new replies or topics until a staff member can review your account.” could be " (…) tant qu’un responsable n’aura pas étudié la situation", or, probably better, “avant l’intervention d’un responsable”.)
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system_messages.too_many_spam_flags.text_body_template(same as above) -
system_messages.silenced_by_staff.text_body_template(same gist as above)
I noticed only today that Crowdin has a translation history feature, after my using the Save button quite liberally. My apologies for that 
I’ll use a local buffer before committing translations from now on.
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I’ve been pondering concepts and vocabulary related to the usage guidelines lately (especially while working on a first draft for the new guidelines_topic.body string), and as a result I’ve committed the few following changes across the board, in an effort to stamp out false cognates (faux amis):
- “civilized” is no longer “civilisé” but “civilité” or “courtoisie” ;
- “inappropriate” is no longer “inapproprié” but “répréhensible” ;
- “abusive” (which always comes in the form “offensive, abusive or …”) is no longer “abusif” but “injurieux, violent” (“offensant, injurieux, violent ou …”).
I’m also itching to substitute every instance of “mettre sous silence” with “silencier,” as previously suggested. Lest there are objections to this, I’ll get around to doing it in a few days.
Thank you @gerhard for your assistance in Crowdin lately
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“Ignorer” -vs- “Mettre sous silence”.
Ici au Québec, ce sont deux choses qui diffèrent. C’est subtil comme différence mais ça reste essentiel. On peut ignorer quelqu’un et cette personne n’en sera pas consciente. Par contre, “fermer le clapet” à quelqu’un est assez brutal.
La fonction sur Discourse est plus proche d’un “ferme ta gueule” que de simplement ignorer la personne. J’irais donc plus pour “réduire au silence”.
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Merci beaucoup pour votre avis @ycrepeau. Je suis ravi qu’un représentant du Québec soit présent dans ce fil. Pour tout vous dire, j’avais proposé “réduire au silence” de façon humoristique, car en français de France l’expression a un caractère assez martial, autoritaire et (ce qui est vraiment problématique) une connotation d’injustice, d’acte expéditif. Il me semble.
Auriez-vous une opinion sur l’importation du terme américain “to silence” en “silencier” ? J’ai tendance à supposer qu’elle hérisserait pas mal de personnes québecoises.
Je profite de votre passage pour vous en parler : je pense qu’une variante franco-canadienne de la locale fr aurait un intérêt certain. D’autant que l’interface de Discourse a clairement opté pour un ton décontracté, très casual. Comme vous le savez sûrement, en France, et dans le domaine informatique en particulier, nous nous exprimons avec un nombre croissant d’anglicismes fermement incrustés dans le langage quotidien : des « mails », des « like », des « uploads », des « followers » et tutti quanti… À votre connaissance, est-ce une exigence répandue au Canada que de disposer de logiciels traduits dans un français plus… francophone ?
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Non. Il n’y a pas d’exigence légale. On pourrait argumenter qu’en disant “le document doit être en français” (obligation contractuelle ou réglementaire), cela indique implicitement que le document doit être rédigé dans un français correct mais chacun a sa définition personnelle de ce que signifie français correct.
Par contre, l’Office de la langue française du Québec offre un outil formidable: Le Grand Dictionnaire terminologique qu’on peut retrouver ici:
Enfin, les logiciels de correction orthographiques (qui font plus que vérifier l’orthographe mais également la grammaire et le style) vont facilement détecter le mauvais usage et recommander une alternative conforme. Je pense ici au logiciel Antidote de l’entreprise Druide dont la réputation dépassent largement nos frontières.
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