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

Answer 1

In a word don't do this.

The same word/phrase in English can often enough have more than one meaning, and each meaning a different translation.

Define mnemonic ids for your strings,and treat English as just another language.

Agree with other posters that id numbers in code are a nightmare for code readability.

Ex localisation engineer