Often, translations include complex tags that should not be translated. To prevent translators from translating this information, Google Translator Toolkit replaces such text with placeholders.
For example, consider the source HTML text:
The < font style="font-weight:bold" color="red" >second< /font > word in this sentence is in bold and red.
which is displayed as:
The second word in this sentence is in bold and red.
To simplify this text and to prevent translators from translating this information, we do not show the original tags in the translation as:
The < font style="font-weight:bold" color="red" >second< /font > word in this sentence is in bold and red.
Instead, we replace these tags with placeholders:
The {0}second{/0} word in this sentence is in bold and red.
There are two types of placeholders:
- Standalone placeholders, shown as {#/}, where # is the position of the placeholder relative to other tags in the segment. For example, if the placeholder is the first placeholder in the segment, it is shown as {1/}; similarly, the second placeholder is shown as {2/} and so on.
- Paired placeholders, shown as opening {#} and closing {/#}, where # is the position of the placeholder relative to other tags in the segment. Sample paired placeholders include HTML links, e.g.,
<a href="http://www.google.com">and</a>, which may be shown as {1} and {/1}.
Translators are free to move around or even remove placeholders as needed to ensure the correct translation for the current segment.