Archived
untranslated/untranslatable strings #247
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Reference: coffey-labs/ihasmail-github-archive#247
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I'm starting to look through the German translation (I'm a native speaker) & will provide a PR once I'm through.
While I'm doing that I've started noticing several places where strings remain in English and are missing from the
de.tstranslation file completely. I'll start posting them here. I will not post strings I would translate differently here as I'll take care of those with a PR as stated above.This will be ongoing work. If you start fixing things before I'll report that I've gone through everything, please leave this issue open for me to post anything further I stumble across. Due to repo permissions I cannot re-open issues once they've been closed. Thanks.
Login form
Settings
Menu
General
"Message order" drop down: all but the last entry which is translated
Appearance
I'm a bit torn about this one. However, "Classic" is not really a name of a product, it's more of an adjective, therefore it should be translated IMHO.
Filters & rules
Sieve rule dialog
At least the one entry with the arrow. I'm a bit torn about the others. If you take them as verbatim header names, then leave them as-is. However, it's rather common to read them in German in various mail-related settings, e.g. "An" (To), "Betreff" (Subject) etc. When there are no obvious good translations one can use "List-Id-Kopfzeile" (this is the translation of "List-Id header", not of "List-Id", but then again a good translation is not verbatim but takes local idiosyncrasies into account).
And ihasmail already uses exactly those German terms in other places, e.g. on the "Out of office" settings page: "Betreff" for "Subject".
Sieve rule list
All the summaries
Labels
Label list
I'm perfectly fine with not translating the word "Label" (singular & plural) itself as it's a technical term referring to something very specific in IMAP terms that's easily understood in Germany.
New label dialog
The buttons
Templates
New template dialog
The whole lower section safe for the placeholders themselves which should obviously not be translated.
Calendar & contacts
New color category dialog
The whole dialog
Section below the color categories
Privacy & security
Apart from the label in the menu? Nearly everything on this settings page. I'll spare you the three or so screenshots it would take.
I'll continue later.
Rebuilt from: GH Archive, notification email, session transcript.
I'm using the Docker image from the Github container registry,
latesttag, pulled right before starting to write this issue. This is due to problems running the build from git on my work's test machine (npmfails to finish properly for some reason I couldn't be bothered to investigate).Thank you — this was a genuinely useful report, and it turned out to be worth more than the list of screenshots suggested.
All of it is fixed and merged, and there is a new
lateston GHCR with everything in it:2026.9.3-pr259. You were testing2026.8.30+pr129, so this is a fair jump.The part I did not expect
Three of the areas you flagged were not missing translations at all. The strings were already in every catalogue and the code was rendering the English source instead of asking for one:
"Subject": "Betreff"has been inde.tsall along. That is exactly the inconsistency you noticed against the Out-of-office page, and it was a rendering bug rather than a translation gap.One fix, and all nine languages got those at once.
That also answers your question about the header names better than I could have: each catalogue had already decided. German translates
From/To/Cc/Subjectand leavesList-IdandX-Spam-Statusalone, which I think is the right instinct — the first four are ordinary words a reader knows from every mail client, the last two are literal header names. Anything a catalogue omits falls back to English, so that stays a per-language decision rather than mine.Classic
You were right, and I have taken your reasoning as written. Five of the six palette names are proper names — ihasmail, Dracula, Gruvbox, Rosé Pine, Tokyo Night — and stay
translate="no". "Classic" is an adjective describing the theme, so it now carries atranslatableflag and reads Klassisch.The actual gap
You were right about the cause too. Features shipped after the catalogues were written and nobody went back. Two further sweeps after your list turned up more of the same:
Add star/Remove star, which had never been in any catalogue in any language"message(s)"— a parenthesis standing in for agreement, so every inflecting language got the wrong form regardlessAlso two counters that appended an
sunless the count was one. That is English grammar written into the code; it produced correct German by coincidence and would never have been right for Russian. Those are plural forms now.196 entries per language, across all nine, one pull request each. Every
t()call site is now covered in every catalogue, including the ones reached through a variable — which is howAdd starhad hidden, since a scan fort("literal")cannot see them.Still open, and known
Two things you will hit if you keep going, so you do not spend time re-reporting them:
describeRule()builds those sentences by concatenation, so the fragments cannot be translated independently and the word order would be wrong in German regardless. It needs restructuring into whole sentences with placeholders.Both are on the list. They are a different shape of fix from everything above, which is why they are not in this batch.
Leaving this open as you asked. Anything further you find is welcome — and if the
npmbuild on your test machine ever becomes worth chasing, I am happy to look at that too.latesthas moved again —2026.9.3-pr272. Worth a fresh pull before your next pass, because the two things I said were still outstanding are now done.The Sieve rule list summaries you reported.
describeRule()was assembling those by concatenation, which is why they could not simply be added to the catalogue: a translator handed" and "on its own cannot move it, and the fragments arrived in the order the English sentence chose. They are whole sentences with placeholders now, so the word order is yours to change. The joining isIntl.ListFormat, so anallofrule reads "A, B und C" and ananyofrule gets the disjunction German actually uses.Recurrence descriptions in the event editor had the same shape and got the same treatment. Two things there you may have opinions about:
Intlrather than a table. The old table carried short forms of "M", "T", "W", "T", "F", "S", "S" — which could never have become catalogue entries, because "T" is both Tuesday and Thursday and "S" is both Saturday and Sunday. A key cannot hold two translations. That was bad data rather than a missing translation, and no amount of translating would have fixed it.Two more sweeps after your list also turned up things you had not reached yet: scheduled send was untranslated end to end, the read-receipt explanations, several compose toasts, and a delete confirmation that read "message(s)" — a parenthesis standing in for agreement, so every language that inflects got the wrong form no matter how complete the catalogue was. Also seven counted strings in Files and the calendar that had never been in any catalogue at all.
All nine languages are at 1248 entries. A scan of every
t()call site, every value that reachest()through a variable, and every plural form now reports nothing missing in any of them.Still open, as you asked. Your German PR is very welcome whenever it is ready — and if anything I added reads wrong to you, that is exactly the review this language was marked Beta waiting for.
latesthas moved again —2026.9.3-pr272. Worth a fresh pull before your next pass, because the two things I said were still outstanding are now done.The Sieve rule list summaries you reported.
describeRule()was assembling those by concatenation, which is why they could not simply be added to the catalogue: a translator handed" and "on its own cannot move it, and the fragments arrived in the order the English sentence chose. They are whole sentences with placeholders now, so the word order is yours to change. The joining isIntl.ListFormat, so anallofrule reads "A, B und C" and ananyofrule gets the disjunction German actually uses.Recurrence descriptions in the event editor had the same shape and got the same treatment. Two things there you may have opinions about:
Intlrather than a table. The old table carried short forms of "M", "T", "W", "T", "F", "S", "S" — which could never have become catalogue entries, because "T" is both Tuesday and Thursday and "S" is both Saturday and Sunday. A key cannot hold two translations. That was bad data rather than a missing translation, and no amount of translating would have fixed it.Two more sweeps after your list also turned up things you had not reached yet: scheduled send was untranslated end to end, the read-receipt explanations, several compose toasts, and a delete confirmation that read "message(s)" — a parenthesis standing in for agreement, so every language that inflects got the wrong form no matter how complete the catalogue was. Also seven counted strings in Files and the calendar that had never been in any catalogue at all.
All nine languages are at 1248 entries. A scan of every
t()call site, every value that reachest()through a variable, and every plural form now reports nothing missing in any of them.Still open, as you asked. Your German PR is very welcome whenever it is ready — and if anything I added reads wrong to you, that is exactly the review this language was marked Beta waiting for.
Closing this, with thanks — it was the most productive report on the tracker, and it is worth saying why rather than just marking it done.
Everything you listed is fixed and in
latestas of2026.9.3-pr272, including the two I told you were still outstanding when you last read this: the Sieve rule list summaries and the recurrence descriptions. Both were being assembled by concatenation, which is why they could not simply be added to a catalogue — a translator handed" and "on its own cannot move it. They are whole sentences with placeholders now, joined withIntl.ListFormat, and the recurrence ordinals are words rather than arithmetic on an English suffix.The part that made this report worth more than its list: three of the areas you flagged were not missing translations at all. The strings were in every catalogue and the code was rendering the English source instead of asking for one.
"Subject": "Betreff"had been inde.tsthe whole time. That is the inconsistency you spotted against the Out-of-office page, and finding it fixed nine languages at once.Two things I am not claiming are finished, and closing this does not close either of them:
The nine translations are still marked Beta, and still unread by anyone who speaks them. That is on ROADMAP rather than here, because no amount of work on my side resolves it — a language loses the Beta mark when a speaker reads it and says so. Your German PR is very welcome whenever it suits, and if anything I added reads wrong to you, that is exactly the review the mark is waiting for.
Catalogues also do not stay complete on their own. Every feature since has carried its strings into all nine, and the check that enforces it runs against every
t()call site, every value reachingt()through a variable, and every plural form. If you find English text in a translated interface again, it is a bug and worth a fresh issue.You can reopen this yourself now. You said you could not, and you were right — read access does not include it. You are on the Triage role as of today, which does. Anything further you find, reopen or file, whichever fits.