GlobalStrings.lua curiosity question
 

Occasionally I think about why some global strings translate, at least in English, to the same thing, yet the strings themselves are different.

As examples:

• ACCEPT = "Accept";
• ACCEPT_ALT = "Accept";

Do these, and many others, translate into different words and phrases in non-English locales? I've always been curious.

In English, the same word can have totally different meanings. How does an AddOn author know which global string to use in this case?

"General" can be a military rank, mean non-specific, mean applicable to everything or everyone, or mean applicable to the majority of things or people yet leave a minority. It might even have more meanings.

Heck, even ALLIANCE and HORDE can mean multiple things in English, although in this case, the global strings refer to the pronouns Alliance and Horde. What if you used either of these in another context that would be valid in English?

On the korean locale ACCEPT_ALT looks to be different

https://github.com/Phanx/wow-globals...KR.lua#L11-L12
https://github.com/Gethe/wow-ui-sour...opup.lua#L1087

There are also some alt globalstrings for russian I think.
(Sorry I have no idea about the rest of your question concerning the context, linguistics and semantics)

Well, you can never be certain. These strings were not added for our convenience, but for the default UI. They add whatever strings and use whatever variable names the situation warrants. Context should give you a good idea, though. Look where the string is being used. If the word "display" is used in graphics options, it most likely refers to a screen or monitor. In other places it might mean "show" (verb).

Thank you guys. I wasn't looking for specific strings, as I was more interested in the idea why Blizzard had multiple strings for the same translation.

Now I know to be careful when selecting which global string to choose. :cool:

Besides different uses of the English word (like a noun versus a verb), in non-English languages there may be the need for more than one word for the same English word depending on context. For example, the word "this" in Catalan can be "aquest" or "aquesta" depending on what it modifies (based on the gender), and likewise in French it can be "ce", "cet" or "cette" depending on gender and whether the modified word starts with a vowel (or silent h). It can get really complicated for languages that deal with cases as well, e.g., like Russian. I tend to try to use these strings for my addons when possible because the translation work is already done, but I fear I might use the wrong words for some languages with which I am not familiar, like Korean.