how to translate properly words with key accelerators

[Christian Stimming]

Am Dienstag, 27. April 2010 schrieb Mark Haanen:
> > For example, the original english words "_Balance:", "_Default" and
> > "Placeholde_r" can be translated as "Saldo Inicial:", "Padrão" and
> > "não-editável". The question is how to choose a equivalent keyboard
> > shortcut for the translated words.
> >
> > Should I pick any arbitrary letter in the translated word ? (I mean,
> > "Saldo _Inicial", "_Padrão", "não-_editável")
> > How to know if another word in the same context has the same shortcut ?
> 
> You don't. The only way to find out (without looking at the source code)
> is to fire up the program and check, menu by menu, whether or not there
> are duplicates. These can then be searched for specifically in the .po
> and corrected.

This answer is completely correct.

It's even worse than that: Even when looking at the source in general you 
cannot know which keyboard shortcuts will appear in any given context. Menu 
entries might be combined from vastly different places of the source code at 
runtime. Hence, the only place to see whether a shortcut isn't ambiguous is by 
checking the program at run-time.

Regards,

Christian

> 
> > What are your suggestions ?
> 
> In my own translation I use the following guidelines:
> 
> 1. For generic menu names or menu options often used in other programs
> (Load, Save, Quit, Page Setup, Edit, Cut, Copy, About, ...) I look at
> the popular programs around (for instance Firefox, OpenOffice, ...) and
> pick the accelerator that is used most often.
> 
> 2. For other options, I try to pick a mnemonic that's easily memorized
> by a user.
> 
> 3. If this leads to duplication, I tend to give the most intuitive
> option to the menu entry which, by my own estimate, will probably most
> often be used.
> 
> 
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