Slovenian (Slovenia) style guide¶
Use this page with the house guide and localization review. The examples illustrate language choices; verify labels and behavior against the product before using them.
Voice and address¶
Write clear, natural Slovenian for the reader’s task. Technical instructions can be friendly and precise without becoming casual. A campaign may use a more playful agreed voice; an error or possible-loss warning needs direct, factual wording. Do not ban technical vocabulary, long words or literal translations when they express the intended meaning well.
Use formal plural address consistently in ordinary help: Odprite datoteko. Omit an explicit pronoun when the verb identifies the reader. Use lowercase vi and vaš in interface prose; personally addressed correspondence can follow its own convention.
Standard written formal address uses plural agreement even for one person: Ali ste shranili datoteko? Do not mix it with a singular participle simply because the reader is one woman or man. The institute’s discussion of polvikanje distinguishes that conversational pattern from standard written address. When personal gender is unknown, prefer a task-focused sentence such as Prijava je končana.
A command addressed to the reader does not establish the number of objects. Slovenian distinguishes singular, dual and plural. Preserve that distinction in file counts and in the surrounding sentence, rather than treating every quantity above one as a plural.
Use the established term for a feature, with the meaning required in context. A familiar synonym is useful only if it still identifies the same thing. Distinguish a transfer, a move and a copy; distinguish signing in from connecting. Check specialist typography terms against the FontLab glossary rather than adopting an inherited supplier translation without review.
Preserve the task¶
Rewrite English structure freely while retaining the actor, condition, scope and result. A more conversational sentence must not add a capability or change the instructions.
- Case sensitivity does not require a mixture of letter cases. Pri geslu je pomembna razlika med velikimi in malimi črkami. explains the distinction without imposing a password-composition rule.
- A failed product-key operation does not prove an invalid key. Ključa izdelka ni bilo mogoče uporabiti. Preverite ga in poskusite znova. reports the failed attempt without inventing its cause.
- Canceling is not saving. For a verified Prekliči button, Izberite Prekliči, dokončajte urejanje in shranite svoje delo. retains the separate save action.
- A warning about unsaved work includes more than documents. Neshranjeno delo drugih uporabnikov bo morda izgubljeno. preserves both whose work is at risk and the possibility of loss.
- Keep an automatic restart distinct from an instruction to restart. Program se bo samodejno znova zagnal. and Znova zaženite program. assign different actors.
- Datoteka je bila premaknjena. reports a move. Do not substitute a word for downloading or copying to make it sound more familiar.
- Watching a demonstration and repeating its gestures are different actions. Oglejte si prikaz in ponovite prikazane poteze. is appropriate only when both are intended.
Preserve permission scope: permission to change other users’ passwords is not permission to change every setting. Keep the identity of a computer, account or owner explicit when the source distinguishes it. Changing “his” to “this,” or a named person to an organization, can erase that distinction.
For marketing, reproduce the claim before adjusting rhythm or imagery. A claim that two things resemble each other is not a claim that they were made for each other. A count of supported touch points is a technical capability, not a decorative phrase to replace with an unsupported gesture example.
Inclusive and accessible wording¶
Address the reader directly where useful. Respect a known person’s name and form of address; do not infer gender from a username or placeholder. Recast unnecessary references to an unspecified person without changing their role, number or responsibility. A singular author does not become several authors merely to avoid a pronoun.
Slovenian has no equivalent of the English article system. Ta, omenjeni and navedeni are not interchangeable articles that can be inserted to make every reference neutral. They can change what the sentence points to. Keep the antecedent and ownership clear.
Mention disability only when it matters to the task, using appropriate current terminology and the person’s stated preference where known. Do not import a universal word ban from another language or replace a specific condition with a different one.
Use descriptive links, meaningful headings and instructions that identify controls by their labels. A color, position or image alone is not enough to identify an action. Give necessary image and audiovisual information in an accessible form. Short sentences help when they clarify the task; neither a one-verb limit nor a ban on mathematical symbols is a language rule. Explain unfamiliar notation in context and follow the accessibility guidance.
Grammar, possession and counts¶
Inflect the surrounding prose for its actual grammatical role. V novi datoteki, z novo datoteko and brez nove datoteke use different cases. A reusable fragment that works in one position may fail in another. Check whole strings after substitution.
Adjective choice depends on meaning, definiteness and established terminology. Nov pogon can introduce a new drive; novi pogon can identify the particular new drive already in discussion. Trdi disk is an established term. Do not map English “a” and “the” mechanically to Slovenian endings or declare every participial adjective subject to one recipe. See the institute’s discussion of adjective forms and meaning.
An adjective correction must not reverse an action: Onemogoči means disable, whereas Omogoči means enable. Check polarity separately from grammar.
Use svoj when the possessor is the sentence’s subject: Shranite svojo datoteko. A different subject can require vaš: Strežnik je zavrnil vaše uporabniško ime. Do not replace one with the other across a resource file without reading the sentence.
Choose prepositions and cases for the actual relationship. Na spletu is established for information published or found online; a blanket ban is wrong. V spletu can refer to a network relationship. See the institute’s explanation of na spletu. An English preposition is not a reliable translation key.
When coordinated prepositions require different cases, give each a suitable complement: zraven slike ali pod njo. Do not force one noun form to serve both constructions. Keep the verb’s required complements, but do not impose a fixed word order that Slovenian grammar does not require.
| Standalone count | Slovenian example |
|---|---|
| One | 1 datoteka |
| Two | 2 datoteki |
| Three or four | 3 datoteke; 4 datoteke |
| Zero or five | 0 datotek; 5 datotek |
| A hundred and one or two | 101 datoteka; 102 datoteki |
| A hundred and three or eleven | 103 datoteke; 111 datotek |
These are standalone nominative counts, not fragments for every sentence. Datoteki sta shranjeni. has dual agreement; Datoteke so shranjene. has plural agreement. A preposition or a negated verb may require another case.
Use the project’s locale-aware plural mechanism. CLDR 48’s Slovenian cardinal categories distinguish integer endings in 1, 2, 3–4 and other values, with a separate effect from visible decimal digits. Test 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 101, 102, 103, 104 and 111, plus supported decimals. Category names select message variants; they do not supply the correct case or a complete grammatical sentence. Check decimal wording in its actual context, rather than attaching an integer noun form to every value.
Interface wording and message states¶
Choose the form for the surface. A short command can use the singular imperative, while a help instruction uses formal plural address. That difference is intentional; do not force both into the same form.
| Purpose | Slovenian example |
|---|---|
| Command | Shrani datoteko |
| Instruction | Shranite datoteko. |
| Control description | Shrani datoteko. |
| Activity title | Shranjevanje datoteke |
| In progress | Datoteka se shranjuje. |
| Completed | Datoteka je bila shranjena. |
| Attempt failed | Datoteke ni bilo mogoče shraniti. |
| Currently unavailable | Datoteke ni mogoče shraniti. |
A failed attempt and present unavailability are different states. Keep tense and number: Datotek ni bilo mogoče najti. refers to a failed search for multiple files; Datoteke ni mogoče najti. concerns one file’s present findability. Do not use the latter as a shorter equivalent of the former.
Give a known problem and a supported next step. Name a required field instead of saying that “this” is empty. Do not add a restart or blame the reader without evidence. Passive and reflexive constructions are useful when they express the right focus; preserve the actor when the message identifies who canceled an operation.
Use sentence case for labels and titles. Preserve an exact displayed label when referring to it, using house emphasis. Generic references to help or settings do not acquire capitals everywhere. Short labels usually omit final punctuation; full explanatory sentences can take periods. A fragment can be complete for its surface without becoming a full sentence.
Preserve placeholders exactly, including delimiters and positional syntax. Establish what a value contains before adding a descriptor: a placeholder is not necessarily a program name. For a known filename, Datoteke »{filename}« ni bilo mogoče odpreti. inflects the descriptor while leaving the value intact. Do not change a required “character” count into a “letter” count.
Keep product names unchanged and inflect a descriptor where useful: v programu FontLab, s programom FontLab. Protected labels, filenames, identifiers, versions and code retain their required spelling. An instruction to use a decimal comma does not authorize changing a version identifier such as 4.2.
Typography and notation¶
Preserve Slovenian č, š, ž and Č, Š, Ž. Test accented capitals in the actual font and at small sizes. Do not remove accents for visual uniformity.
Use »{filename}« for ordinary double quotation marks in this guide’s Slovenian examples. This is a consistent house choice, not a claim that every other quotation style is ungrammatical. Code and literal resource values keep their required quotation characters. Punctuation placement follows whether the quoted material is a complete sentence or a phrase.
Place commas according to sentence structure. Close an inserted subordinate clause: Preverite, ali ste vnesli vse zahtevane podatke, in poskusite znova. Use Prosimo, počakajte. when retaining the politeness formula. Do not insert a comma automatically after an introductory prepositional phrase or between a subject and its predicate.
The difference between tako, da and , tako da can mark manner versus consequence. Choose the intended relationship, rather than applying one spelling to every occurrence. See the institute’s discussion of the conjunction.
Use colons to introduce explanations or lists. Keep list punctuation consistent with its grammatical structure. Parentheses are useful for genuinely secondary information; do not remove a condition simply to avoid them.
A hyphen, a range dash and mathematical minus serve different purposes: 50-odstotni popust, 8–21, −18 °C. Prefer a clear descriptive construction when a technical compound is awkward; do not join an identifier to an arbitrary suffix. Use a spaced dash only when that punctuation serves the sentence.
An ellipsis normally stands apart from complete words: Nalaganje …. Missing letters inside an incomplete word are a different case. Preserve an ellipsis belonging to a real control label. The institute’s ellipsis and symbol guidance explains why “always attached” and “always separated” are both too broad.
Use a decimal comma in prose: 12,5 mm. Group large numbers consistently with the chosen locale format, for example 12.345,67 or a space-based technical format 12 345,67. The institute’s number-grouping discussion distinguishes contexts, including four-digit numbers. Do not group years or literal identifiers as if they were measurements.
Keep values with their symbols: 50 %, 30 s, 5 min, 2 h. Temperature has a space before °C; an angular degree sign is attached to the value: 90°. In adjective form, 50-odstotni avoids an ambiguous improvised symbol compound. See the institute’s symbol-spacing discussion.
Use nonbreaking spaces where they prevent an unsuitable line break. Do not ban them in online help or make an entire long sentence unbreakable. Ordinary abbreviations such as npr., itd., št. and t. i. retain their punctuation and internal spacing; unit symbols follow their own notation. Expand unfamiliar acronyms on first relevant use and check their meaning. DNS expands to Domain Name System, as in RFC 1034. Descriptors such as koda PIN and pomnilnik RAM can simplify case handling without altering an acronym.
Keyboard, speech and review¶
Check keyboard assignments in the actual product on supported Slovenian layouts. Kopiraj means Copy; Ponovi means Repeat and must not replace it in a shortcut table. Access keys and command shortcuts are separate mechanisms. Do not assume that a supplier’s old Ctrl combination still performs the same action or that accented letters are universally forbidden.
Preserve actual key labels. Distinguish the numeric keypad when required, and test arrow-key navigation, focus order and escape routes. Do not assign shortcuts from a generic table without checking conflicts and product behavior.
For narration, use natural standard Slovenian. Verify the pronunciation of unfamiliar product names and acronyms individually. An inherited phonetic spelling is not sufficient evidence, and borrowed letter names do not all follow one rule.
Read an address clearly enough to recover the intended value. Do not automatically omit its protocol, path or meaningful punctuation when the listener needs the literal address. Ordinary sentence punctuation can be expressed through intonation; technical characters may need spoken names.
Keep narration, captions and demonstrated actions aligned. An introduction or recap is useful when it helps the viewer; a fixed ten-second introduction is not a Slovenian language rule. Match timing, caption length and delivery to the actual medium, preserving conditions and recovery steps.
Review with a proficient Slovenian reviewer. Test complete substituted strings, singular/dual/plural agreement, literal labels, accents, punctuation, narrow layouts, keyboard access and assistive output. Verify the product’s behavior separately from the illustrative language examples.
Sources¶
Adapted from Microsoft’s Slovenian localization guidance and Mozilla’s Slovenian community guide, with source notices and adaptation terms recorded in credits. The adaptation consolidates advice, corrects changed meanings and unsupported absolutes, and applies house context. Linked primary references support selected linguistic and notation checks. See credits for shared attribution.