Dutch, third of Phase 1 #152

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opened 2026-08-31 18:50:43 +00:00 by jcoffey-dev · 0 comments

jcoffey-dev commented

2026-08-31 18:50:43 +00:00

Owner

781 of 796 strings. The fifteen left are product names, bare URLs and example addresses. Generated by AI, unreviewed, marked Beta, with the report link doing the job a native speaker would.

Decisions

Register is u, following Sie and vous. This is the one of the three most likely to be overturned, and the file says so: Dutch leans informal further and faster than German or French, and je is what most consumer software now uses. It's written down as a single consistent choice precisely so changing it is a find-and-replace rather than an argument.

"Postvak IN" rather than "Inbox" — what Outlook and Thunderbird call it in Dutch.

"Label" stays English, as in German. That's the same rule that made French use "Libellé": use what the reader will meet elsewhere, rather than always translating or never. No Dutch client translates it; Gmail translated it in French.

The separator, again

The folder-context U+0004 needed inserting by script — and in the opposite way to French. There it arrived as a raw control byte and had to be escaped; here it didn't arrive at all. Both are the same underlying awkwardness: U+0004 doesn't survive being written into a file by hand.

The catalogue checker caught it both times by reporting the keys as stale, which is exactly the silent failure it exists for — a translation that looks right, is never looked up, and renders English for ever.

Checks

459 tests, typecheck, build clean. npm run i18n:check reports nl at 98% with no stale keys. Code-split into its own 45 kB chunk.

Still Beta. First things I'd want a Dutch speaker to check: the u/je decision above all, and "Gesprek" vs "Conversatie" for conversation.

Merged 2026-08-31 as coffey-labs/ihasmail@d75618401a

_{Rebuilt from: git history, session transcript.}

**781 of 796 strings.** The fifteen left are product names, bare URLs and example addresses. Generated by AI, unreviewed, marked **Beta**, with the report link doing the job a native speaker would. ## Decisions **Register is `u`**, following `Sie` and `vous`. This is the one of the three most likely to be overturned, and the file says so: Dutch leans informal further and faster than German or French, and `je` is what most consumer software now uses. It's written down as a single consistent choice precisely so changing it is a find-and-replace rather than an argument. **"Postvak IN" rather than "Inbox"** — what Outlook and Thunderbird call it in Dutch. **"Label" stays English**, as in German. That's the same rule that made French use "Libellé": *use what the reader will meet elsewhere*, rather than always translating or never. No Dutch client translates it; Gmail translated it in French. ## The separator, again The folder-context U+0004 needed inserting by script — and in the *opposite* way to French. There it arrived as a raw control byte and had to be escaped; here it didn't arrive at all. Both are the same underlying awkwardness: U+0004 doesn't survive being written into a file by hand. The catalogue checker caught it both times by reporting the keys as stale, which is exactly the silent failure it exists for — a translation that looks right, is never looked up, and renders English for ever. ## Checks 459 tests, typecheck, build clean. `npm run i18n:check` reports nl at 98% with no stale keys. Code-split into its own 45 kB chunk. Still Beta. First things I'd want a Dutch speaker to check: the `u`/`je` decision above all, and "Gesprek" vs "Conversatie" for conversation. **Merged** 2026-08-31 as coffey-labs/ihasmail@d75618401a7e <sub>Rebuilt from: git history, session transcript.</sub>

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Reference: coffey-labs/ihasmail-github-archive#152