French endings in translations

Translations
1

For French translations, I’ve noticed that some endings are -er and some are -ez for the titles. I think we should choose one of the two…

Example : Utiliser les modèles vs Créez les modèles

WDYT?

2

Hi,

Verbs ending with “-er” are best for buttons or short label actions.
Verbs ending with “-ez” are best in full sentences (let’s say above 3 words) even if there is no subject in the phrase.

IMHO

3

Hi,

just found this page which explains where to use which: Le Conjugueur - Choisir entre l'impératif et l'infinitif and it definitely looks like we should use “-er”.

4

Cool. I was looking for something like this yesterday and couldn’t find it :slight_smile:

So +1 from me to use “-er”.

5

@xrichard WDYT? :slight_smile:

6

Hi,

I have read Le Conjugueur - Choisir entre l'impératif et l'infinitif , it confirms my opinion given above :

  • Verbs ending with “-er” are suitable for short labels (menus, buttons, …)
  • Verbs ending with “-ez” are best in full sentences (to give an advice or to explain a process with several steps) or in other words phrases starting with a capital letter and ending with a dot ‘.’.

From my point of view it’s not clever to replace automatically all “-er” by “-ez” despite “-er” ending verbs should be more often used than “-ez” verbs just because app strings should be as short as possible to ease user understanding.

7

@xrichard : saying “it depends” is not going to help us and not going to have some consistent translations :slight_smile:

So I propose the following best practice/rule:

  • For all UI translations (which are short text), use the -er ending. This includes titles, buttons, but also hints.
  • For translation of content pages, prefer -er but use -ez if it makes more sense.

Note:

I’d personally have preferred to say to always use -er since it’s much simpler and it allows to be consistent, which IMO is even more important:

Par contre, dans un même texte, il faut veiller à l’uniformité en employant le même mode partout.

For me when reading Le Conjugueur - Choisir entre l'impératif et l'infinitif I don’t find any reason to not use -er. The examples given when to use -ez don’t seem to match our case. In our case we are in the following context:

  • les consignes (ex : prière de garer la voiture)
  • les guides d’instructions
  • les marches à suivre (comme pour les appareils électriques)
  • les indications techniques (par exemple, en informatique)

@xrichard WDYT?

Thanks

8

Hi,

I think “full phrases” with -ez are more appealing but if you think it’s simple to have only one rule I’m ok to use -er everywhere (except when the subject is the pronoun “vous” of course!).