True, I just focused on the bot because that’s the problem I’m currently facing and which I thought is most likely relevant to many sites because I assume that most will customize the bot’s first message (although the need for this could be reduced if it were possible to have the bot plus a welcome email).
Excellent idea! I might add: treat as missing unless the corresponding copy has also been customized.
The extra benefit of this solution would also be that it facilitates complaint driven improvement of discourse sites: “Why is X being shown in English when everything else is in my preferred language?” -
"It’s because we don’t speak all languages. Could you give us a translation and we’ll fix it. "
I fact, one could even add a mouse-over hint or something like that, encouraging users to submit their translation. If your suggested fix gets implemented, could you make sure those fallback texts get their own class?