Sesotho sa Leboa (South Africa) style guide¶
Apply these conventions alongside the house voice and localization review. Examples illustrate distinctions; they are not an approved product glossary. See credits for sources and reading scope.
Voice, terminology and exact meaning¶
Write natural Sesotho sa Leboa for the actual audience. Keep the chosen register and address consistent. Wena addresses one person; lena can address several or express respect. Do not choose a form by guessing the reader's age. An explicit pronoun need not accompany every subject concord: O kgokagantšwe go Inthanete gabjale is the supplied connected-state example.
Translate meaning, conditions and uncertainty. Adapt idioms and humour without inventing a capability. A terminology choice needs its context: kgopelo and tirišo do not make every meaning of “application” interchangeable; sebopego, hlama and fomo need the intended meaning of “form.” Use the approved term for a computer mouse rather than mechanically translating the animal. The supplier itself varies maose and mmaose; settle spelling in the glossary.
Preserve action depth. “Send backward” can move an object one position, while “send to back” can move it behind everything. Do not standardize both as Romela ka morago when the product distinguishes them. The same principle applies to error tense, selection scope and permissions. Glossary order follows the target entry: agenda and lenaneothero need not appear at the same position.
Protect names and identifiers. Use approved localized language names where available, including Seisimane, Segerika and Seheberu; a supplier's blanket instruction to leave all language names English is not a language rule. Keep source spelling in literal API names, filenames and formats, such as user.exe, WNetGetCaps, SetMenuDefaultItem, Courier New and PageUp. Translation must not alter copyright facts or turn a supplier's old rights-management installation example into current product instructions.
Characters, spelling and punctuation¶
Retain š (U+0161) and Š (U+0160). The supplier's decimal values 154 and 138 are not their Unicode code points. Lowercase i is not uppercase I. Preserve diacritics in names and text; a short alphabet list does not define every character a product must accept.
Use current orthography for capitalization, word division and borrowed terms. Keep sentence case in headings and labels, with required capitals in names and calendar terms. Molwelatokologo illustrates a compound; it does not justify joining every phrase. Tone and vowel distinctions matter, but do not infer pronunciation from the supplier's damaged accent table or strip marks from quoted dictionary forms. Ordinary product text and linguistic transcription serve different purposes.
Use punctuation to make structure clear. No space precedes a comma, full stop, question mark or colon; ordinary prose takes a space after them. A colon introduces an explanation or list, not every pause or heading. Keep parentheses tight inside and separated from surrounding words. Nka go thuša ka eng? is a question; Bula faele ge … illustrates an unfinished condition, not a complete instruction.
Use a hyphen where the spelling requires one, as in the supplied ntwa-dumela, and for a displayed stem. Use a true minus in 20 − 4 = 16 and a range dash in 2010–2011. Two en dashes are not the Unicode em dash. Preserve meaningful apostrophes and quotation boundaries, and follow punctuation for UI references. A nonbreaking space is U+00A0, not the degree sign °; an editor's visible-space marker does not change its character identity.
Noun classes and complete sentences¶
Noun classes govern agreement across nouns, modifiers, pronouns and verbs. They do not assign biological sex to interface objects. The supplier's claims that genitives or modifiers “do not apply” must not erase possession or qualification. Check the noun, owner, referent and complete construction.
| Distinction | Supplied example |
|---|---|
| Person and number | mosadi, basadi; moromedi, baromedi |
| Another plural pattern | leoto, maoto; lengwalo, mangwalo |
| Location | lewatle, lewatleng; sekolo, sekolong |
| Modifier agreement | naledi ye e kgopamego |
| Possession | gagwe, ya gagwe, sa bona require the intended owner and concord |
Do not append an English plural suffix or assume every noun has both numbers. Agreement changes outside the noun too. Forms of “new,” including mpsha, leswa, seswa, moswa and baswa, depend on the referent and construction. Pronouns such as nna, wena, bona, rena, yena and yona are not freely interchangeable merely because some do not distinguish male and female people.
Retain spatial and agent relations. Bula ka, Phumola go tšwa go and Tlošitšwe ke express different relationships; prepositions and concords are not disposable English filler. A locative ending is not a substitute for every “from,” “to” or “by.”
A verb's form can encode more than passive or past tense. The supplied reka, rekiša, rekile and go reka cannot all be used for “bought”; likewise, every derivative of boloka does not mean “saved.” Preserve tense, aspect, mood, polarity and participants. The supplier's assertion that the subjunctive never changes a verb form is not a safe editing rule. Do not import English split-infinitive rules. Romela is a command; Sebara e amogela faele describes a server receiving a file. Choose word order for clear meaning rather than a rigid template.
Dates, time and calendar names¶
Use the product's locale formatter and the agreed calendar vocabulary. A supplied date such as 17 Matšhe 2011 is clearer than an ambiguous two-digit year. Do not combine contradictory “always two digits” and four-digit-year rules. Pattern letters such as M, m, d and y belong to a particular formatter; verify its syntax. 07:15:55 illustrates the supplied 24-hour time. Week starts and week-number rules are separate settings; neither follows solely from 1 January.
The supplier weekday forms are Mošupologo, Labobedi, Laboraro, Labone, Labohlano, Mokibelo and Sontaga/Lamorena, with Moš., Lbb., Lbr., Lbn., Lbh., Mok. and Lam. as abbreviations. PanSALB's rule 34 has different short forms, including Mšp, Mkb and LMr. Choose one verified set for the product; do not mix them accidentally.
PanSALB's rule 109 allows both month-name sets below. The older supplier ban on traditional names is not a universal rule. It also reverses the June/July traditional pair relative to this reference.
| Month | Traditional form | Adapted form |
|---|---|---|
| Jan | Pherekgong | Janaware |
| Feb | Dibokwane | Febereware |
| Mar | Hlakola | Matšhe |
| Apr | Moranang | Aporele |
| May | Mopitlo | Mei |
| Jun | Phupu | June |
| Jul | Mosegamanye | Julae |
| Aug | Phato | Agosetose |
| Sep | Lewedi | Setemere |
| Oct | Diphalane | Okotobere |
| Nov | Dibatsela | Nofemere |
| Dec | Manthole | Desemere |
CLDR and the supplier differ from this reference in some spellings. Resolve that deliberately when reviewing formatted output. Supplier month abbreviations Jan, Feb, Matš, Apr, Mei, Jun, Jul, Ago, Set, Okt, Nof and Dis are a separate set to review against the chosen full names.
Numbers, units and contact details¶
Keep numerical values exact. The source mixes decimal commas and points and supplies contradictory currency examples. In CLDR 48, the locale inherits a decimal point and grouping comma: 1,234.5 illustrates those separators. Inspect the actual runtime instead of hardcoding that example. Use the South African rand code ZAR or its appropriate R symbol with the correct amount; preserve signs and distinguish rand from cents.
Use defined unit symbols and case: km, m, dm, cm, mm, hL, L, dL, cL, mL, kg, g, mg, t and °C. Case is not optional: mg and Mg denote different scales. A spelled-out construction such as dikramo tše 5 or litara e 1 can place the noun first; it does not reverse symbol notation such as 5 g. Preserve imperial quantities when the source needs them; convert only with an accurate value and a reason.
Bits and bytes differ. Keep MB, Mbit, MB/s, Mbit/s, MHz and Hz distinct. A rate per second must not become a rate per minute. The supplier's table conflates some bit/byte names and translates seconds using minute wording, so do not copy it as a glossary. Percentages do not universally add to 100: check whether categories overlap and whether they share a denominator. Preserve the supplied value rather than silently capping it.
For South African geographic phone numbers, retain the domestic initial 0 or replace it with +27 for international form: 0AA BBB CCCC becomes +27 AA BBB CCCC. The geographic domestic number has ten digits; other number classes need their applicable rules. The source's “seven-digit” ten-digit grouping is inconsistent. Preserve actual postal-address fields and the four-digit postcode. Use verified destination names and approved or clearly masked example data, not an arbitrary source address presented as fictitious.
Use locale-aware sorting and test the result. Keep s and š distinguishable; do not strip all accents or apply the supplier's mixed-language example list as a collation algorithm. Country names, maps and availability claims need current evidence for the product and destination.
Messages, abbreviations and final review¶
Use consistent wording for genuinely equivalent messages. Distinguish a command from status: Hlama tokumente ye mpsha is action wording; Feditše reports completion. Leina la fonte ke le letelele kudu identifies a font-name length problem. Keep recovery advice accurate and preserve the actor and time in failure patterns such as E paletšwe ke go bula tokumente. Memory and disk space are different resources.
Preserve placeholders, escapes and markup, including %d, %ld, %u, %lu, %c, %s, %1!d!, %2!d! and %1!-.200s! where the actual formatter uses them. The corrected spacing in O nyaka go boloka diphetogo go %1? must survive substitution; this example assumes that the value names the save target. Do not attach an unverified noun-class concord to arbitrary inserted text. Keep the resource's newline and ampersand escaping contract; &, && and &&&& need parser-aware handling, not automatic relocation to the beginning of a word.
Abbreviations exist: supplied examples include Mna, Mdi, Mtšana, Moprof, bjbj., mohl. and Mohl. Check case, punctuation and audience. Keep familiar Cc, Bcc, SMS, SQL, HTML and PIN where appropriate; explain unfamiliar acronyms without inventing expansions. A useful descriptor can remain even when a blanket “no redundancy” rule would remove it. Names and terminology follow the product glossary.
Follow accessible content. Use the actual control labels, input methods, keycaps and shortcuts; keep F1 or Esc only when the documented action uses that key. Distinguish access keys from command shortcuts and test collisions, accented letters, underlining and resource markers. Imported bindings and blanket arrow-key behavior are not language rules. Identify the numeric keypad when necessary. Read the rendered interface and substituted messages with a proficient Sesotho sa Leboa reviewer.