Message References

Another use-case for placeables is referencing one message in another one.

menu-save = Save
help-menu-save = Click { menu-save } to save the file.

Referencing other messages generally helps to keep certain translations consistent across the interface and makes maintenance easier.

It is also particularly handy for keeping branding separated from the rest of the translations, so that it can be changed easily when needed, e.g. during the build process of the application. This use-case is best served by defining a term with a leading dash -, like -brand-name in the example below.

-brand-name = Firefox
installing = Installing { -brand-name }.

Using a term here indicates to tools and to the localization runtime that -brand-name is not supposed to be used directly in the product but rather should be referenced in other messages.