change meta field labels with translatedstrings.txt

[puregin]

dear all

my system settings: lightroom 5.7.1 on a mac book pro on os 10.11.15.

i'm trying to customize my german layout and description of the meta data fields by simply changing texts strings in TranslatedStrings.Txt file.

i figured out that the label of a meta field (see no.1 - including mouse over label) and the mouse over long text (see no. 2 - long description in mouse over text) can be manipulated in the TranslatedStrings.Txt file:

1 = "$$$/AgMetadata/IPTC/location=Ortsdetail"
2 = "$$$/AgMetadata/IPTC/location/Description=Geben Sie Details zu einem Ort ein, der in diesem Bild dargestellt ist."

Unfortunately this is not working for all the displayed meta fields. lets take the exmple field "Beschriftung" which has no mouse over text at all:

i've found the corresponding string in the TranslatedStrings.Txt file:
"$$$/AgLibrary/MetadataFormatters/ColorLabel=Beschriftung"

according to the above mentioned logic, I've added the line
"$$$/AgLibrary/MetadataFormatters/ColorLabel/Description=Beschriftung des Bildes hier eingeben"
which unfortunately does not show the expected result; it's not reflected at all in lightroom.

what am i missing? can't all the labels of the meta input fields be modified like the first example?

any hint will be appreciated.

thanks

silvio

 

[Victoria Bampton]

Hi silvio, welcome to the forum!

I haven't a clue I'm afraid, as you're the first person I know of to attempt it, but I didn't want to leave you hanging.

 

[clee01l]

A Late welcome to the forum.

In my American English version, there is no field called ColorLabel. Only a field called "Label". Also I do not have a TranslatedStrings.Txt since it is not applicable. Furthermore. MouseOver tooltips are not enabled for the "Label" field.

So. where did you get the TranslatedStrings.Txt file? Did it come with your German version of LR?
Does the line "$$$/AgLibrary/MetadataFormatters/ColorLabel=Beschriftung" generate the correct "Beschriftung" in your metadata panel? If not try replacing it with "$$$/AgLibrary/MetadataFormatters/Label=Beschriftung" and report back. No matter what you do there will not be a tooltip for the Label field as it is turned off in the code.

"Labels" are a standard text field in the EXIF. LR associates colors with text that matches values in the ColorLabel Set currently invoked.

 

[Johan Elzenga]

AFAIK, there is no American English version or German version of Lightroom. There is only one multilingual version. In the Lightroom preferences you can choose 12 languages in the 'General' tab. But maybe this was different with Lightroom 5?

 

[clee01l]

AFAIK, there is no American English version or German version of Lightroom. There is only one multilingual version. In the Lightroom preferences you can choose 12 languages in the 'General' tab. But maybe this was different with Lightroom 5?

I think this is true. However Versions sold for Non English countries have a folder in the Resources folder of the app that includes a language folder with an extension corresponding to the language (.de = German) It contains among other things a TranslatedStrings.txt file.

 

[johnbeardy]

Maybe that's true about US servers, Cletus, but my Lightroom application includes those translations files and the ability to switch the UI language in Preferences. I bet yours does too.

Changing things in these files is a matter of trial and error. I've looked at them a little (to try to use built-in translations in my plugins), and a general observation is that sometimes there are a number of translations for the same word. I can't offer help on a specific translation, but the OP just needs to persist. The translation will be in there, somewhere.

Another issue is that each version of Lr installs in a new folder, so you'll need to copy the edited translation information into the next version. You can't simply copy your translations file because the new version will have some new words and corrections.

 

[Johan Elzenga]

I would expect that even the American servers will have a version that is at least bilingual: English and Spanish. I vaguely recall that in case of Lightroom 5 there were two versions however: one version with four lanuages and another version with the 12 languages.

 

[clee01l]

I did a finder search on the TranslatedStrings.txt file and got no hits. Additional searching and I did finally find something in the Resources folder that contained TranslatedStrings.txt files for all languages except English.
Inspecting the German TranslatedStrings.txt file I do find the entry for
"$$$/AgLibrary/MetadataFormatters/ColorLabel=Beschriftung" So, perhaps the variable name for the Label Field is ColorLabel".
Since the English version has no tooltip for Label the adding a Description entry for the "$$$/AgLibrary/MetadataFormatters/ColorLabel won't have any effect.

 

[puregin]

dear all

thanks a lot for your replies on my question. quite surprising that after more than two weeks of inactivity, so many people replied at once ;-)

the translatedstrings.txt is a translation file which probably won't exist on a english installation at all. it's in a subfolder named according to the translated language, in my case it's "de.lproj". changes in here will probably be overwritten by program updates which i'm fully aware of too.

the "Beschriftung" example i've mentioned is really just an example. I actually would like to be able to add/change text in the tooltip of any meta description label, regardless whether it's an EXIF, IPTC or a LR specific field.

as far as i have understood in this forum, there should be a switch somewhere to activate tooltips (short and long description?), is that correct or is it hard coded and can't be changed?

thanks again for your support.

silvio

@victoria: although your reply was not really helpful in a technical way, it's quite a funny and motivating one, thanks for it too ;-)

 

[clee01l]

Silvio,
There are many new forum requests in any given day. Threads that fall into an uncommon area of LR (in your case translated strings) take someone familiar with the issue. Sometimes these threads "fall through the crack" when no on knowledgable can provide an immediate answer. Victoria is very good at following up and seeing that no question got unanswered even if the answer is "i don't know."

That said, AFAIK, tooltips description are hard coded to appear or not. There is no switch to turn on this feature unless the programmer included the code to show a tooltip description. Tooltips are tedious embellishments that add nothing to the functionality of a computer program. As such they are usually added after everything else has been completed and functioning properly.

 

[puregin]

@clee01l
thanks for another prompt reply and the clarification of the technical issue.

i actually meant what i wrote to victoria, i was positively - and in a fun way - suprised about her post, no complaints at all...

 

[Victoria Bampton]

Happy to help puregin. If ever we miss a post for a day or two, please feel free to 'bump it' by posting again in the thread to bring it back to the surface, as posts can get lost in the traffic.