php - Gettext: Is it a good idea for the message ID to be the english text?

Question

We're getting ready to translate our PHP website into various languages, and the gettext support in PHP looks like the way to go.

All the tutorials I see recommend using the english text as the message ID, i.e.

gettext("Hi there!")

But is that really a good idea? Let's say someone in marketing wants to change the text to "Hi there, y'all!". Then don't you have to update all the language files because that string -- which is actually the message ID -- has changed?

Is it better to have some kind of generic ID, like "hello.message", and an english translations file?

Answer 1

Wow, I'm surprised that no one is advocating using the English as a key. I used this style in a couple of software projects, and IMHO it worked out pretty well. The code readability is great, and if you change an English string it becomes obvious that the message needs to be considered for re-translation (which is a good thing).

In the case that you're only correcting spelling or making some other change that definitely doesn't require translation, it's a simple matter to update the IDs for that string in the resource files.

That said, I'm currently evaluating whether or not to carry this way of doing I18N forward to a new project, so it's good to hear some thoughts on why it might not be a good idea.