Translatable texts should be full phrases including punctuation

== Principles ==
1. Translatable texts should be full phrases or sentences.
2. Punctuation should always be included in the translatable string.
3. When a variable is necessary, this should be embedded in the full phrase, not assumed to be appended at the end of it.

== Rationale ==
Different languages have different word order. The only way to fully support that is to have a full phrase to translate, not two "halves" of a sentence (embed a variable token in the full sentence); or something that assumes a variable "at the end": it may not come at the end in the target language and trying to force it can lead to incomprehensible text. Not splitting up a sentence automatically implies a variable "token" should be used where appropriate, to allow the translator to use natural word order.

Punctuation should be included (including any full stop of a sentence) because different languages have different rules for punctuation; using the correct punctuation format is part of the translation process.

== Current problems ==
In most cases there is no problem with the English texts as in the translation files, but there are a few problems. Notably:

1. "My text and files are available under" and "except this private data: password, email address, IM address, phone number."
Two problems here: a link to Creative Commons is used "between" these two halves (no natural word order possible) and this embedded link is not followed by a space (but a translated text cannot start with a space!): the result is not only possible wrong word order, but text is not properly separated from the link. A single sentence with a variable for the link would solve both problems here.
2. "Unless otherwise specified, contents of this site are copyright by the contributors and available under the" and ". Contributors should be attributed by full name or nickname."
Note that these are two sentences, and the full stop that starts the second string actually belongs to the first. This could be one translatable string, or two (one for each sentence) but there should be a variable token for the CC link followed by a full stop for the first sentence in any case.
3. "Member since" and "The subscription has been authorized, but no callback URL was passed. Check with the site's instructions for details on how to authorize the subscription. Your subscription token is:" both assume a variable at the end.
They should be included via a variable token to allow appropriate word order.

Another issue caused by "missing variables" relates to the CC link that should be embedded in cases 1. and 2.:[[BR]]Since the CC licenses themselves have been translated in a large number of languages, a localized version should link to the corresponding localized CC version if that is available. This implies that the placeholder for the CC link should contain the fully-qualified URL so the translator can modify this to link to an appropriate version.