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Polish localization guide

Use these rules with the localization principles, Qt interface rules and Polish language guide. They describe current practice, not a sequence of earlier review passes.

Matching masters for interpolation

Use dopasować for the action, pasować for the state: Dopasuj mastery, Dopasuj kerning, Mastery pasują, Mastery nie pasują. Status labels are Pasują and Nie pasują; the participle is dopasowane, adjectives are pasujące and niepasujące, nouns are dopasowanie and niedopasowanie. Never use pasuj as a command or pasowanie as the noun. Do not change Dopasuj where it translates another operation, such as Fit.

The tool is Swatka, feminine: Swatki, Swatkę, Swatką. The everyday phrase pasować do siebie describes a couple that is a good match; dopasować names the action from the same stem, and Swatka is a matchmaker.

These terms apply when masters are matched for interpolation. Keep the current translations of master, kerning and all other terms; inflect the match term and follow the command form already used in the file. Tool names are proper nouns and start with a capital letter. Preserve placeholders, accelerator marks, punctuation, capitalization style and file format. Keep English source strings, German and other languages unchanged. If the source says compatible, retain the translation of compatible. Leave other senses, such as search matching, and uncertain senses unchanged. This decision supersedes earlier terms for this sense, including compatibility and synchronization wording.

FontLab terminology and compact labels

Preserve deliberately uppercase source labels using the language’s case rules. Keep numeric controls compact with UPM, PPM and LSB/RSB (French AG/AD); explain the full terms in help. The Family Dimensions “Units Per eM:” label is an intentional expanded exception.

Use the current core memory and its approval status. OpenType lookup defaults to the translation of procedure, with a different term only when strong OpenType-specific evidence supports it. Explicit choices are German Lookup, French lookup, Polish procedura and Russian процедура. Ordinary searches, individual rules and OpenType features are separate concepts. Preserve literal code keywords and identifiers.

Translate Fusion with the fallback Welder. Use the core's phonetic FontAudit transliteration in non-Latin scripts, including Chinese; preserve FontAudit in code. Proposed spellings remain proposed. Before rebuilding a QPH, recover team edits and import their terms and notes into the core memory.

Compare mnemonic-split terms with unmarked labels. Keep labels compact, aiming for 120% of the English length in Dimensions and Glyph Window preferences without losing meaning. Omit redundant font, color or command wording when context supplies it. TTH labels can omit “use” and abbreviate TrueType hinting; help can explain more. A full harmonization requires three complete catalog reviews, then reconciliation of help with the final UI and verification of generated resources.

Current terminology

Polish for Poland.

The Polish term table, generated from localization/pl-core.tmx, is the current terminology authority. Use its definitions to select the right concept and its notes for grammar and usage. An approved term stays consistent across the UI, help and manual. A proposed term is a candidate awaiting review; its presence does not establish linguistic approval. Historical translations do not override a current entry.

For references to the FontLab interface, use the current TS catalog in the same control context. Reconcile a conflicting core entry with that catalog before regenerating the term table. Keep dated before/after evidence in the existing fl10n review ledgers and Git history. For a missing term, use the supplied fallback original term and definition to make a supported proposal. Never change its status merely because a translation reads fluently.

Follower node terminology

Use węzeł naśladowca, with short type label Naśladowca and variants Naśladowca X and Naśladowca Y. The node follows the movement of leading key nodes. Interpret legacy English Servant as Follower in this physical sense. The earlier fan/supporter reading is obsolete. In prose use węzeł typu Naśladowca, węzły typu Naśladowca, węzła typu Naśladowca and węzłami typu Naśladowca to keep the type label stable while declining the surrounding noun. Use tryb Naśladowca and właściwość typu Naśladowca for the behavior. Keep English source keys unchanged. This term follows the user's explicit naming decision.

Stroke, thickness and grammatical context

In the application UI, stroke is obrys. Use tęgość only for stroke thickness, grubość trzonu for stem thickness, and grubość for general thickness. A short English Thickness label does not establish which meaning applies: inspect the actual control and the surrounding labels.

Treat glossary entries as lemmas. Use Przekształć for a command and Transformacja for a panel, settings group or history entry; use Kadruj for the crop command. A checkbox describing a font takes Nieproporcjonalny, not the plural nieproporcjonalne. Keep cases and agreement in complete help sentences, including tęgość obrysu, tęgości obrysu and grubość trzonu.

References, guides and components in context

Use odwołanie do elementu for a linked element reference, with odwołania, odwołań and odwołaniem in complete phrases. A measurement reference is a different concept: retain punkt odniesienia, wartość odniesienia and materiał odniesienia for geometry, comparison values and visual source material.

A positioning guide is prowadnica: dodaj prowadnicę, nazwa prowadnicy, usuń prowadnice, do prowadnic. A component is komponent, with genitive komponentu and plural komponenty. Use z komponentami and z komponentów; a change of noun can require a different preposition form as well as an ending.

Register and address

Use the direct second person singular in product help and dialogs, without a capital: Otwórz plik, Czy chcesz kontynuować? Standard commands and short labels use the imperative, which is also the platform convention: Otwórz, Zapisz jako…, Cofnij. A noun phrase names a state or a panel: Ustawienia, Wygląd. Product messages drop the first person; the company's own prose keeps a warmer register and is identified as such before translation.

Distinguish the message states: Zapisz plik (label), Zapisz plik. (instruction), Zapisywanie pliku (in progress), Zapisano plik. (done), Nie udało się zapisać pliku. (failed attempt), Nie można zapisać pliku. (present limitation).

Headline style in compact strings

Strings passed through translation can still be program data. Trace their consumers before translating punctuation-led tokens: .round is a literal TrueType command parameter, not a caption. Preserve it exactly, even when tr() marks it as translatable; localize the surrounding explanation instead.

A navigation path in the English source can be outdated. Verify the live control binding and current page titles before copying it. The loop-fill option is now Informacje o foncie › Wymiary fontu › Bez wypełnienia pętli. Preserve the Qt source key while using the verified localized route; do not silently invent a replacement path.

When a choice repeats its own definition, keep one complete explanation. For PANOSE, use Żadna wartość nie pasuje [1] without a second no-fit phrase. Keep the numeric value and its distinction from variable/any [0]; update every disambiguated occurrence and the explanatory paragraph together.

Translate PANOSE tool names by their writing mechanism. In Monotype’s tool-kind definition, pressure point is a flexible pen nib that spreads under pressure: use elastyczna stalówka, not punkt nacisku. Keep the classification number [3].

A selector can complete a sentence: its value and the menu action that supplies that value may deliberately start lowercase. Inspect the adjoining label before capitalizing every QAction. Keep units, identifiers and literal case examples unchanged. In long hints, remove repeated wording while preserving both branches of a condition, every allowed character and each file-format exception.

Review each action’s visible label and tooltip together. When a hint names the tool, use its localized action name without the mnemonic marker; keep grammatical inflection in a functional description. Do not leave an older tool name in the hint after renaming the action.

Include generated property display names and enum choices in casing audits; inspect their .pef definitions and TS disambiguation comments as well as .ui files. A lowercase glossary term may need an initial capital as a standalone label. Preserve case-sensitive identifiers such as uniXXXX and mark/mkmk.

Check casing from the UI role even when the English source starts lowercase. The standalone action show Fonts is Pokaż fonty; literal case examples and sentence fragments need their own treatment. Distinguish glyph tags (tagi) from OpenType feature tags by inspecting the affected object.

Resolve ambiguous English nouns and verbs from the control's role. The Export Profiles settings-window title is Profile eksportu, a name for the profiles, not a command to export them. Check the .ui property and handler before applying an action-style translation to a title.

Check the effect of clear before choosing a deletion verb. Clearing follower state leaves the nodes in place; name the property or disable the behavior. A short label must not imply that the objects themselves will be removed.

When prose quotes a navigation path, copy each localized component from the corresponding control, omitting only its mnemonic marker: Preferencje › Otwieranie fontów. Check embedded paths separately from same-source consistency groups, because the full sentence has a different source key. Do not retranslate a page title or change its casing to shorten the sentence.

In a message dialog use Nie pokazuj ponownie; the visible message supplies the object. An optical-size checkbox can say Rozmiar optyczny. Do not shorten a standalone warning by removing its scope or consequences.

Review every same-source counterpart after changing a translation, including strings shorter than the reference language. Generated property-type and property-instance descriptions usually describe the same setting and should agree. Keep justified differences for label versus tooltip, grammatical context and distinct meanings. Compare plural forms by position; do not count a single message’s singular and plural forms as inconsistencies.

Use the edited German label to find redundant wording, not as a hard length limit. Compare the same Qt context, source, comment and plural form. Count visible characters without markup or mnemonic markers; a count cannot prove that a label fits its control.

Polish has no articles. Drop a repeated object or an obvious verb: Dodaj odwołanie in an element dialog, Na wierzch for stacking order, Spacjami in the Copy Text submenu. Preserve case endings. A standalone object is Ramka, not Ramkę; the command is Utwórz Prowadnicę mocy, not Utwórz Prowadnica mocy. Commands use imperatives: Wektoryzuj performs an action, Wektoryzacja names a process. Ordinary sentences keep full grammar.

Use sentence case and established feature-name capitalization. Usuń nakładki starts with a capital as a menu command; an intentional lowercase letter-case example stays lowercase. Match Edits and Match Moves are Dopasuj edycję and Dopasuj przesunięcia. Master compatibility remains zgodność matryc; copying German's synchron family must not erase that distinction.

A construction recipe is przepis: Edytuj przepis, w przepisie, przepisy autowarstw. Use bezmetryczny for nonspacing elements, with the appropriate grammatical agreement. The property excludes the element from metrics; it does not delete its contours. Measurements may use wers. and min.. Check every occurrence of a repaired concept, including mnemonic-split sources and quoted menu paths. Retain necessary conditions and precise technical terms.

Terminology decisions that generalize

  • master is *matryca: the casting matrix, phonetically close to the English and the right object. Never *mistrz, never wzorzec. Plural matryce; matryce zgodne for compatible masters.
  • UPM is rozdzielczość firetu: units per em, the em being the firet. PPM is pikseli na firet in prose and stays PPM in hinting fields.
  • An old style typeface is *antykwa renesansowa, never *stary styl; old style figures are cyfry nautyczne; lining figures cyfry wersalikowe; small caps kapitaliki.
  • smart is *sprytny, inflected: *sprytny narożnik, sprytny filtr, sprytne wypełnienie. Never inteligentny.
  • Width: advance width is szerokość pola. Its short Width label is Pole, including Pole: %1, Ustaw pole and Połącz pole. Use natural inflection in prose; never use bare Szerokość for this metric. Geometric and bounding-box widths remain szerokość. Vertical advance is wysokość pola (founder's decision of 29 September 2026; FontForge says szerokość znaku); the width axis is szerokość with oś named; tracking is rozświetlenie; line gap is interlinia; sidebearings odsadka lewa/prawa; kerning kerning, para kernowa, klasa kernowa, wyjątek kernowy, with the verb kernować and the adjective kernowy (never kerningować); hinting gives hintować, hintowy, and autohinting is autohinting.
  • Drawing: kontur (contour), węzeł (node), uchwyt (handle), segment, krzywa, odcinek (straight segment), punkt kontrolny, kotwica (anchor), element, komponent (component), odwołanie (reference), warstwa (layer), maska (mask), pinezka (pin).
  • Type anatomy: szeryf, trzon (stem; trzon standardowy for a standard stem, łącze trzonu for a stem link), zwieńczenie (terminal; a stroke cap stays zakończenie), wydłużenie górne/dolne (ascender/descender), wysokość x, wysokość wersalików, linia pisma (baseline), punca (counter), brzuszek (bowl), naddatek (overshoot, the optical surplus), pułapka (ink trap). A drawn path is obrys (stroke): zakończenie (cap), łącze obrysu (join), utrwal obrys (expand stroke), utrwal filtr (expand filter).
  • Other reviewed decisions: autotrace is wektoryzacja; mark is diakrytyk, mark attachment przyłączanie diakrytyków, cursive attachment łącze pisankowe, nonspacing mark diakrytyk bezmetryczny; variation selector przełącznik wariantów; lookup is procedura, feature code kod funkcji zecerskiej; Unicode codepoint jednostka unikodu, glyph index indeks glifu; font tables are tablica CVT, tablica OS/2 (an interface table stays tabela); axis map mapa osi; auto layer autowarstwa; color flag barwa flagi; Remove Overlap usuń nakładki; spacing controls regulatory świateł; waterfall kaskada; Tunni line linia Tunniego; master compatibility zgodność matryc.
  • *font, *krój, czcionka:** font is the file and the profession's word; krój (krój pisma) is the typeface design; czcionka is the metal sort and the everyday word. The catalog says font for the file and krój for the design; never czcionka in the UI.
  • Feature names follow the house voice (founder's decisions of 29 September 2026): Nudge is Szturch, Power Nudge Mocny szturch, Power Brush Pędzel mocy, Power Guide Prowadnica mocy, Power Stroke Obrys mocy; Matchmaker Swatka; True Fill Pełna krasa; Sketchboard szkicownik; Skin skórka; Cousins kuzynostwo (singular kuzyn); Follower node węzeł naśladowca; Dream Up wyczaruj; FontLab account konto FontLab; Vexy coins żetony Vexy coin. Operations with a fixed technical meaning keep their name: Oblique, Flex, OT Def, Genius (węzeł Genius). Fusion is Spawacz, from the fallback Welder. When a term has no plain Polish word, translate the fallback original term shown in the term table.
  • Established loans stay: kerning, hinting, glif, font, interfejs, panel, eksport, import. In FontLab, lookup is procedura, as specified above. Calques such as aplikować for apply (use zastosuj) or suportować are errors.
  • Standard commands follow the platform: Anuluj, Kopiuj, Wklej, Cofnij, Ponów, Zakończ, Preferencje (macOS) or Ustawienia (Windows), Pokaż w Finderze. Qt's own qtbase_pl catalog uses the same words.

Grammar that the catalog must respect

Every noun inflects through seven cases, and the case is chosen by the preposition or verb the string does not always contain. A label that names an object stands in the nominative (Warstwa); an object of a command takes the accusative (Usuń warstwę); a source or origin takes the genitive (z warstwy). Adjectives, participles and past-tense verbs agree in gender and number with the noun, which is why %1 został usunięty fails for a feminine %1: recast as Usunięto: %1 or as label and value.

Do not attach a suffix to a placeholder to inflect it (%1u); ask for one string per case. Keep one-letter prepositions with the next word (w pliku, z warstwy) using a no-break space in prose; in a compact label a breaking space is acceptable.

Facts for reviewers

  • Plurals: four CLDR categories: one (exactly 1), few (integers ending in 2, 3, 4 except 12, 13, 14), many (every other integer including 0, 5 to 21, 25 to 31, 112 to 114), other (fractions, genitive singular: 1,5 pliku). Qt Linguist gives Polish three numerus forms (1; 2 to 4 except the teens; the rest) with no fraction form. Fill all three forms: %n plik, %n pliki, %n plików. Test 0, 1, 2, 5, 12, 22, 25 and 102.
  • Numbers: 1 234 567,89 with a no-break space as group separator; four-digit numbers not grouped (1234); 25% without a space; short date 5.03.2026, long 5 marca 2026 (genitive month); ordinals 1. or spelled as an adjective.
  • Mnemonics: Plik takes P, Edycja E, Widok W, Pomoc C on Windows; check the localized platform. One & per label, unique per menu, never on ą ę ł ń ó ś ź ż. The Polish programmer's layout types those letters with AltGr, so shortcuts using AltGr collide with typing.
  • Key names: Polish Windows and macOS keep Shift, Ctrl, Enter, Backspace, Delete, Esc, Cmd or ⌘; arrows are strzałka w górę and so on; Space is spacja.
  • Quotation marks: „…” with «…» inside. Straight quotes stay in code.
  • Diacritics: ą ę ł ż ś ć ń ó ź precomposed (NFC) in the catalog; capitals Ą Ę Ż clip at tight line heights; every diacritic letter is its own letter in collation, ń right after n.
  • False friends: billion is miliard; bilion is 10¹². Ewentualnie means possibly; aktualny means current; sympatyczny means likeable; rezygnować is not resign in the quit sense; kontrola is oversight, a UI control is element sterujący or kontrolka.
  • Capitalization: months, weekdays, languages and nationalities as adjectives are lowercase (polski), nationalities as nouns are capitalized (Polak). No English title case.

Audit mnemonics by actual sibling menu, including actions reused in several menus. Keep visible wording and technical terms intact. If a dense menu has more labels than available unaccented letters, record the unavoidable collision and test keyboard cycling; do not invent a synonym solely to obtain a letter. Translate assembled fragments as a complete phrase before checking the pieces. A non-numerus count may need a label-and-value form instead of an uninflected noun.

Review the Polish

First compare source and target: omissions, added specificity, changed conditions, quantities, placeholders, markup, mnemonics, all three numerus forms, case and gender agreement. Then read the Polish as Polish: is a compact label a grammatical phrase, does a help paragraph move from the object through the action to its result, is the second-person register steady, does the terminology match the term table and the Polish typographic literature rather than a calque? Recheck the facts after any stylistic edit. Classify findings by MQM family and severity; record every change with before, after and reason. Report only checks performed; a proposed term remains proposed until a native reviewer approves it.

Nudge terminology

Nudge is Szturch (verb szturchać); Power Nudge is Mocny szturch (verb mocno szturchać). Inflect these names in prose: szturchu, mocnego szturchu, mocnym szturchu. Keep the other Power names consistently in the mocy family: Pędzel mocy, Prowadnica mocy, Obrys mocy. These house decisions were updated on 30 September 2026.

Rapid tool and Quick Help references

The tool name is Rapid. Use Rysowanie narzędziem Rapid for Rapid draw and Edycja narzędziem Rapid for Rapid edit. Keep the name distinct from ordinary descriptions of speed and from the Vertical rapid and Horizontal rapid contrast classifications. Do not use Rapidograph as the tool name.

Keep Rapid in Latin letters; inflect the surrounding tool or action wording.

For Quick Help, match tool, panel, option and command references to the current TS catalog in the same control context. Keep inflection natural in sentences. If a core entry differs, reconcile it with the catalog before regenerating phrasebooks. A compact UI label and its full prose explanation can differ. Check the current English conditions and consequences: disabling Cloud also disables mark/mkmk generation, and mark generation requires Cloud. Preserve mark and mkmk as literal OpenType feature tags.

Distinguish the movable transformation origin (punkt bazowy) from the fixed glyph coordinate origin (początek układu współrzędnych). A vector guide can have a punkt początkowy. Do not impose one translation on these three senses. Likewise, select a label by its TS context: the Overlay dialog uses Lewo, while other controls can use do lewej. Case-insensitive matching must retain all candidate contexts rather than discard capitalization variants.

Preserve explanatory headings when English deliberately expands a short UI label. Translate prose ampersands as i when natural; they are not Qt mnemonics. A literal menu ampersand is different: Brush && Stroke displays Pędzel & obrys, which a quoted path should retain. After replacing a noun, check its surrounding agreement: z bieżącej matrycy, not z bieżącego matrycy. Check menu paths separately from history labels: the current command is Font › Metryki › Powiąż metryki glifów....

In hinting descriptions, the thickness of a horizontal or vertical letter stroke is grubość kreski or grubość trzonu. It is not tęgość obrysu: no outline-stroke effect is being measured. Preserve runtime Unicode script names such as Latin, Cyrillic and Arabic when they are examples of values returned by ICU; a translated static sample in a UI file does not establish that those runtime values are localized.

The Glyph panel button is Automatyczne odstępy (InspectorGlyph), while the Glyph window menu action is Rozmieść automatycznie (GW_Glyph) and Autospace is Autoświatła in MainWindow and WidgetMetrics. Select the label of the control the instruction asks the reader to use. The action Outline is Konturowanie; an ordinary contour remains kontur.