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I have a project where I need to translate a lot of words and text fragments in different languages.

In these texts, underscores are currently added in these text (fragment(s)) to be used as keyboard shortcuts (used in Visual Studio).

However, I was wondering if this is the way to go, or if it would be better to remove the underscores and add them AFTER translation.

Is there some guideline to follow?

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At least, you need to make sure you don't get shortcut collisions within each local context where the shortcuts have to be unique (I guess its some kind of dialog or form). If you can assure this whilst the translation is done, do it. If your translator just gets a naked word list and no information about the context, you can only assure this afterwards, so better add them after translation. The person who places the underscores in the translation should know about the context and the global shortcuts he should not use (like Ctrl-C, Ctrl-X, Ctrl-V).

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  • In some cases they cannot be unique (so maybe I should not add shortcut keys at all in those locations). I will probably do it afterwards; I don't want to leave then the underscoring to the translators (it's a hobby project after all). Also thanks for reminding about the global shortcuts. Mar 18, 2014 at 9:14

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