Pulseaudio plugin in XFCE displays empty tooltip when language is set to Swedish

1

Hello from Sweden!
I have asked this question on the MX Linux forum, they refer to Transifex since it is related to translation. However, there are two parts of this problem:

  1. The message is translated into “nothing” (empty string) so it is not displayed at all

  2. If I copy an older version of the translation file, the message is displayed but not translated, i e the message is in English.

    The problem occurs in Linux Mint 22 among others. See below.
    The problem is with the file /usr/share/locale/sv/LC_MESSAGES/xfce4-pulseaudio-plugin.mo

    The following happens:
    When the language is set to Swedish and the sound is unmuted
    the tooltip displays an empty box when the mouse pointer is over the panel icon.
    The translation file seems to translate the English message into “nothing” (empty string).
    When the sound is muted no translation is made and the English message is shown “Volume 40%…”
    Removing the translation file makes the English message show up even when the sound is unmuted.

    The desired behaviour is that the English message is translated into Swedish: “Volym 40%…” I tried to acheive this by copying a language file from another version of Linux Mint (LMDE 6).
    The message then shows up also when the sound is unmuted but it is not translated into Swedish.
    The translation works as expected in LMDE 6.
    Obviously the translation is made in serveral steps, i e more than one translation file
    This is not only a translation error but also some kind of logical error or mismatch in the translation file(s).

    So there is more troubleshooting neded. I have no tools for looking into the translation files. They are not text files. The problem also occurs in LMDE 7 (with XFCE installed) and in another Linux distribution built from Debian 13 (MX Linux 25).

Please inform me if I posted this in the wrong forum!

Regards

Olle Lindgren

2

I have now fiddled around a bit and the problem is now solved!

I made a new translation file that works in MX 25 and Linux mint 22.

Fixed bad translation + syntax error.

I am not familiar with the workflow on Transifex.
Should I submit this somewhere else to get the change implemented?

/OLLE

3

Hello @Olle_Lindgren,

I am Antonis from the Transifex Customer Success team.

I’m glad to hear you were able to track down and resolve the issue.

You can contribute translations freely to open source projects in Transifex once you join the project you’re interested in. If you’re not already part of the project, you can use our explore page.

One more thing I noticed is that you tracked the issue down to the xfce4-pulseaudio-plugin.mo file. However, Transifex doesn’t currently support the .mo file format, so you won’t be able to find it even if you join the project. Therefore, GitHub (or the platform where the project’s repository is located) might be the best place to contribute your fix.

I hope this helps!

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Hi Antonis,

For your information:

The .mo files are the compiled (machine-redable) version of the .po files which are text files.

I am joining the project XFCE Panel Plugins, waiting for approval.

Regards

Olle

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