1832982 - Incorrect wording in German menu text

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Mozilla Localizations :: de / German, defect)

Description

[Georg Schwarz]

Steps to reproduce:

Use Fennec on an Android system with language set to German.
On an arbitrary web page, open the three dots menu.

Actual results:

One menu entry will list as "In Seite suchen" (literally translated to English as "search in page").

Expected results:

The correct preposition in German is not "in" but "auf", i.e. it should read "Auf Seite suchen". "Seite" (in the sense of "page", as it is being used here) is used with the preposition "auf", sometimes also with "innerhalb", meaning "within" (which would probably a bit too fancy here, but at least correct), but never ever with "in". Please simply correct this (you may capitalize "auf" in this case, provided you do that for all your menu entries, as seems to be the case).
I searched the code and found occurrences of this incorrect wording in the following files (sometimes with several matches):
firefox-android/android-components/components/feature/findinpage/src/main/res/values-de/strings.xml
firefox-android/fenix/app/src/main/res/values-de/strings.xml
firefox-android/focus-android/app/src/main/res/values-de/strings.xml

Comment 1

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

The severity field is not set for this bug.
:jonalmeida, could you have a look please?

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Comment 2

[Delphine Lebédel [:delphine - Use needinfo]]

Adding Coce (German locale manager) so he can weigh in on this. Thanks

Comment 3

[Michael Köhler [:Coce]]

Interesting find, thanks Georg. I generally agree on the use of „auf“ with „Seite“, though I don’t know why the choice was for „in“. We might also skip this problem altogether by switching to „Seite durchsuchen“, which is the translation for the item in the „edit“ menu (unless that’s too long?).

As this issue is also present in Firefox itself (see Transvision which is an incredibly helpful tool yet again) I’d like to hear Sebastian’s and Philipp’s thoughts on this.

Comment 4

[Georg Schwarz]

I guess the wording of "in Seite suchen" was simply introduced because of the English wording "search in page". "In" might work in English (I leave this to judge to English native speakers), but it's very poor in German. (prepositions are not necessarily an easy one-to-one match between German and English :-)).
I agree that "Seite durchsuchen" is probably the best style in German. I would appreciate if you could apply this change to the German text wherever it is appropriate (there are apparently several occurrences in the code).

Comment 5

[Philipp Fischbeck]

I agree that "Seite durchsuchen" sounds like a good fit! If Sebastian has no problem with it, I'll change it in all places found on Transvision. I'm not sure if this covers all Fennec/Fenix occurrences, but I think it does.

I will probably extend this to all occurrences of "find in".

Comment 6

[Sebastian Hengst [:aryx] (needinfo me if it's about an intermittent or backout)]

"Seite durchsuchen" is fine.

For "in" vs "auf" + "Seite suchen": "in" is in my opinion the correct choice because the loaded page is a standalone object and can be compose of different elements (navigation, multiple content elements etc.). The equivalent of a physical object would be a book for which also "in [einem] Buch suchen" gets used.

Comment 7

[Georg Schwarz]

Interesting linguistic theory, and certainly a very technical view :-)
Looking around I cannot find this notion (in German) and corresponding usage of a page (physical or not) being thought of as a 3D object and therefore requiring the preposition "in" instead of "auf" (unlike, as you correctly point out, in the case of a book, which is thought of as a 3D ("thick") object and therefore requires "in").
Traditional pages in a book or newspaper for example are also typically composed of various elements, nevertheless they are referred to by "auf" exclusively by anyone speaking proper German.
Anyway, by using the very appropriate and in my opinion stylistically best terminology "Seite durchsuchen" you elegantly avoid this discussion :-)

Comment 8

[Philipp Fischbeck]

I have changed the relevant strings to "Seite durchsuchen" on Pontoon, applying to Firefox, Firefox for Android, Focus for Android, Firefox for iOS, Seamonkey, and Thunderbird.

Comment 9

[Francesco Lodolo [:flod]]

For Firefox, note that we're at the end of the 115 cycle, so changes will show in Nightly, Beta 116.

ESR115 will be fixed in a few months (when we pick up translation updates), while mobile projects should be fixed in 4 weeks.

Comment 10

[Francesco Lodolo [:flod]]

Assuming this is fixed, please take into the account the information above for verifying it.