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WWT: "Lego" message includes 'contact us' in the middle of a sentence creates a weird translation
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Description

As a WWT user, I want the "contact us" message to be presented in a clear and user-friendly manner in all languages, so that users can feel encouraged to contact us.

Acceptance Criteria:

  • Update the "contact us" message to be more user-friendly and understandable in translated languages (to discuss in estimation)

Background:

When WWT has a 'contact' error (not 'refresh' error), we display it with a 'contact' link that is a separate message. That message is currently inside the full sentence.

In English, it renders as:

english-error-contact.png (68×1 px, 7 KB)

The link is a partial message inside the entire sentence. This works in English, but it doesn't in other languages. Example, in Hebrew, it renders:

rtl-error-bad-translation-puzzle.png (68×390 px, 5 KB)

Literal translation: "Error: Please to contact us about this issue"

What it should be: "Error: Please contact us about this issue" or something similar. The reason it has "to contact us" is probably because the translation message for "contact" is standalone, outside the main sentence.

Potential Solutions:
We could fix this in one of two ways:

  1. Make the entire error message a link, with a single translation message. This will resolve the "puzzle" partial translation issue.

Example: "Error: [please click here to contact us about this issue]" (brackets represent a link)

  1. Make the entire error message one sentence that ends with a distinct and semantically separate "contact us" link. This will make translations work grammatically to all languages.

Example: "Error: Please use this link to contact us: [link to contact]"

Event Timeline

Mooeypoo added subscribers: ifried, Prtksxna.

Tagging @Prtksxna and @ifried since the choice should be product/UX one. Language/translation-wise, both options are valid, but I'm not sure which one looks and feels better to users.

What it should be: "Error: Please contact us about this issue" or something similar. The reason it has "to contact us" is probably because the translation message for "contact" is standalone, outside the main sentence.

I think this might be because we're not explaining things properly to the translators, not least because there's a bug in the whowrotethat-error-contact-link message docs which read "The text of the link to the contact page shown in {{wm-msg|whowrotethat-state-error-contact}}." — it should be msg-wm! So translators have been seeing this:

translatewiki.png (180×1 px, 20 KB)

There are other lego messages; are they being translated correctly?

In general, I don't think we can avoid lego messages — or are there languages in which it never makes sense to link a phrase within a sentence?

PR for the qqq typos, and to fix some parameter lists: https://github.com/wikimedia/WhoWroteThat/pull/129 (this PR is maybe useful even if we get rid of the lego messages).

Would this be easier if only the word 'contact' was the link?

If not, I think option one is better, having the call to action in the text itself is better than having a separate link.

I agree with the suggestion put forth by @Prtksxna.