Setswana (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¶
Use natural Setswana appropriate to the reader and task. Keep address and register consistent; the supplier's formal tone is a starting point, not a reason to make every label ceremonial. Preserve facts, conditions, uncertainty, owners and quantities. Use the appropriate name for people and their language; do not assume a language name is also the right name for its speakers.
Translate the operation in context. Leba is supplied for the verb “view”; a view mode may need a noun. Akhaefe, Tlhoma and Patlisiso illustrate different word functions, not a universal menu template. A dialog title should identify its task and match the command's meaning; menus are not all nouns. Keep parallel controls grammatically parallel and headings in sentence case.
A shorter sentence must retain its purpose and consequences. The supplier says to put action before purpose, then supplies Gore o bule sebaka, tlosa dithulaganyo tse di teng, with purpose first. Choose the order that makes the dependency clear. Do not turn a message about movement into one about disappearance merely to “fix” an infinitive. Preserve the exact property of a setting or operation.
Use approved terminology for borrowed words and names. Loanwords need Setswana spelling and grammar; do not preserve an English silent-letter pattern mechanically. Sefara, Disefara and Batsamaisi are supplied terminology examples to check against the product glossary. A familiar source term can come from Afrikaans or another language, not necessarily English. Coin a compound such as the supplied atlelasetsela only after terminology review; length alone does not justify it.
Characters, spelling and grammar¶
Retain š (U+0161) and Š (U+0160). The supplier's 009A and 008A values are not their Unicode code points. A short alphabet table is not a complete character-acceptance policy. Preserve names and diacritics; distinguish ordinary product orthography from dictionary pronunciation or tone notation. Do not strip every circumflex from quoted material or invent tone marks from the supplier's examples.
Keep required capitals in proper names, languages and calendar terms, as in Setswana, Tshwane and Diphalane. Do not copy English title case into controls. Protected product names keep their spelling. Possessive concords such as ya, sa and la depend on noun class; they are not English definite or indefinite articles. Do not append English possessive 's to a name. Omit “your” only when ownership remains clear: Tima khomphiutha is a supplied instruction whose context must identify the computer.
Noun classes govern agreement across a sentence. They are not a biological-sex classification for interface objects, and class semantics alone do not determine every noun. Mosadi and basadi illustrate singular and plural; the supplier's further tshadi example is not a general second plural to apply to arbitrary nouns. Count, collective reference and agreement need contextual review.
Modifiers and pronouns must retain the noun's reference. Ena o gorogile maabane uses a pronoun with an arrival statement; O tsamaile maabane shows that an explicit noun need not be present. Neither permits deleting the subject agreement. Keep spatial relations in constructions such as Tobetsa mo… and choose mo or ka mo by context, not by replacing every English “in” or “on.”
Verb forms distinguish tense, aspect, mood and polarity. They are not invariant under a subjunctive construction. Ke batla gore o nthuse illustrates a dependent request to one addressee; Ke batla gore lo nthuseng changes the addressee to plural. The plural imperative can use -ng. Review the whole construction rather than applying the supplier's “plural prefixes only” claim to every word. Translate ongoing and completed actions distinctly, and do not impose an English split-infinitive rule.
Dates, time and calendar names¶
Use the product's locale formatter and verify the calendar vocabulary. 17 Mopitlwe 2011 is the supplied full-date example; a two-digit year such as 17/03/11 can be ambiguous. Do not combine the source's contradictory digit-count rules. 07:15:55 illustrates its 24-hour time. Pattern letters such as M, m, d and y are formatter-specific. Week start and week numbering are separate settings, not a universal rule inferred from 1 January.
The supplied weekday set is Mosupologo, Labobedi, Laboraro, Labone, Labotlhano, Matlhatso and Sontaga/Tshipi. Its short forms are Mos, Lab, Labr, Labn, Labt, Matlh and Sont/Tsh. Choose the relevant Sunday name and a consistent abbreviation style rather than displaying a slash-separated alternatives list as a finished label.
The table retains the supplied month forms and abbreviations.
| Month | Full form | Short form |
|---|---|---|
| Jan | Ferikgong | Fer |
| Feb | Tlhakole | Tlh |
| Mar | Mopitlwe | Mop |
| Apr | Moranang | Mor |
| May | Motsheganong | Motsh |
| Jun | Seetebosigo | Seet |
| Jul | Phukwi | Phk |
| Aug | Phatwe | Pht |
| Sep | Lwetse | Lwetse |
| Oct | Diphalane | Diph |
| Nov | Ngwanatsele | Ngwn |
| Dec | Sedimonthole | Sed |
CLDR 48 differs in places, including Mopitlo and Motsheganang. Resolve the product's vocabulary with the locale reviewer and inspect generated dates. A source table does not prove that every runtime uses those names.
Numbers, currency, units and contact details¶
Preserve the value and noun agreement when spelling out a count. Ba le bararo and tse tharo illustrate different class contexts for three. A fixed “spell out through ten” rule must yield to measurements, identifiers and the needs of a control.
The source gives conflicting decimal and grouping rules. CLDR 48 Setswana uses an apostrophe for grouping and inherits a decimal point: 1'234.5 illustrates those separators. Inspect the product's actual formatter. A plus or minus is not a grouping separator. Rand and cents must not be combined as R1.20c; R1.20 is an amount in rand, while 20c denotes cents. Keep ZAR, signs and amounts accurate, and test negative values rather than treating a missing supplier example as a prohibition.
Use defined unit symbols: km, m, dm, cm, mm, hL, L, dL, cL, mL, kg, g, dg, cg, mg, t and °C. Their capitalization is not optional. A symbol follows its value, as in 5 kg; full unit names need natural Setswana agreement. Preserve source imperial quantities unless an accurate conversion is wanted. Keep 20% distinct from a count of twenty, and retain the denominator and any ownership in a percentage statement.
For South African geographic phone numbers, domestic form includes the initial 0 and has ten digits. International form replaces that zero with +27: 0AA BBB CCCC becomes +27 AA BBB CCCC. Other number classes have their applicable rules. The source's seven-digit description paired with ten positions is inconsistent. Preserve actual digits and postal-address fields, including the four-digit postcode. Use approved or clearly masked example data; a source address is not automatically fictitious. Verify current geographical names, maps and product availability where relevant.
Use locale-aware collation and test actual labels and names. s and š remain distinct characters; a sort option does not authorize respelling data. Do not use the source's mixed-language sorting list or Unicode code-point order as a Setswana collation algorithm.
Punctuation, abbreviations and identifiers¶
Follow punctuation. Use a full stop for a complete sentence and a question mark for a question; labels need their appropriate house formatting. Do not put a space before a colon or place one at every pause. Parentheses are tight inside, with word spacing outside. Quote direct speech accurately without automatically quoting every UI label.
Use the true minus in 20 − 4 = 16, and preserve range endpoints in 16–32. A displayed stem such as -olola uses a hyphen, not an em dash. Ellipses mark omission or continuation; they cannot replace a necessary step or make a numeric sequence unambiguous by themselves. A nonbreaking space is U+00A0, not a keyboard shortcut; use one where text must stay together, not inside every abbreviation.
Supplied abbreviations include Sk., jk. and jj.; check them against the product's register and chosen spelling. Explain unfamiliar acronyms when useful, retain established forms and verify expansions. RAM, DLL, DPI and TCP/IP need their actual technical meanings. Scaling must not automatically become reduction. A useful descriptor may follow an acronym even if a blanket redundancy rule would remove it. German, Italian, Hausa and Swahili examples embedded in the supplier guide are not Setswana models. Keep literal placeholders, resource escapes, names and copyright facts intact.
Messages, accessibility and final review¶
Keep commands, questions, status and failures distinct. Ke amogela melawana ya tiriso is an acceptance statement; removing its first-person reference can change a checkbox's commitment. Feditse reports completion. Tobetsa F1 go bona Thuso is appropriate only when F1 actually opens help. A title should identify the task, not mechanically copy an English gerund.
Error wording must preserve the cause, actor and time. Faele ga e bonwe, E paletswe ke kgolagano, Memori ga o a lekana and Taelo ga e teng are supplied patterns requiring contextual review. Do not merge a failed past attempt with a present inability or replace memory with storage space. Add only a supported recovery action.
Shortening must not delete dynamic information. The supplier removes %1s! from an error while retaining %2!Ix!; do not copy that omission. Preserve the actual resource tokens exactly and verify suspicious source syntax before editing it. Supplied formatter examples include %d, %ld, %u, %lu, %c, %s, %1!d!, %2!d! and %1!-.200s!. Boloka diphetogo go %1? assumes the inserted value identifies the save target. Review full substituted messages for agreement, order, clipping and required data.
Follow accessible content. Retain real accessibility features; a supplier's speculation that localized services may not exist is not evidence for deleting them. Identify keys by actual keycaps and explain directions when needed. Test access-key markers, accented letters, underlining, collisions, command shortcuts and the target control's arrow behavior. Do not inherit duplicate-key permission or English shortcut tables without testing the app. Specify the numeric keypad when it affects the action. Read the complete rendered interface with a proficient Setswana reviewer.