Preferences―Browse mode: 'Automatic Say All on page load' mistranslated to French (“Lecture automatique au chargement de la page”)

[Chealer]

The Browse mode section of Preferences has a setting called 'Automatic Say All on page load' in English. From my basic understanding of NVDA, this appropriately describes the setting's role. But in French, the label is:

Lecture automatique au chargement de la page

…which translates to:

Automatic reading at page load

I believe this describes the behavior whether the setting is enabled or not; what changes is how much is read, so removing "All" loses the meaning.

The English phrasing is visibly idiomatic. According to the French quick reference, "Say All" is translated to “Dire tout”, so an idiomatic version could be:

Dire tout automatiquement au chargement de la page

NVDA version

2025.3.3

Windows version

11

🅭🄍

[XLTechie]

CC @CyrilleB79

[CyrilleB79]

Hello @Chealer

Actually "Say All" is the name of a feature which starts reading from the current point (start of the page in the case of a new page) and reads continuously without stopping, until the end of the page is reached or until the user interrupts it with a command. It is sometimes also called continuous reading, probably from others screen readers terminology. It can be opposed to commands such as the one which only reads the current line or which read the window title which only reads a specific piece of text and then stops.

But even if the feature is called "Say All", users usually almost never read a whole page from top to bottom in a row: they skip menus, page footer, they jump to most interesting paragraph or part of text, they re-read an interesting piece of text twice, they click a link and jump to another page, etc. So I'd say that keeping "all" in the translation is not mandatory at all.

A more literal translation would rather be "Dire Tout automatique au chargement de la page". But I feel this sounds less understandable in French than in English.

Anyway, a better proposal can be discussed. Translations are usually not been discussed or worked on here in main NVDA GitHub repo.

I guess the French users mailing list (https://groups.io/g/nvda-fr) may be a most suitable place to discuss French translation. Alternatively, especially for quick fixes, you may write directly to me, to "cyrille dot bougot2 at laposte dot net", as I am currently the main NVDA French translator, especially regarding NVDA's GUI.

At last, it seems to me that you are not an NVDA user yourself; no problem of course. But I am curious on how you got to NVDA and if you are trying to solve real-life issues encountered by NVDA users. Thanks!

[Chealer]

Bonjour Cyrille,

[…]

But even if the feature is called "Say All", users usually almost never read a whole page from top to bottom in a row: they skip menus, page footer, they jump to most interesting paragraph or part of text, they re-read an interesting piece of text twice, they click a link and jump to another page, etc. So I'd say that keeping "all" in the translation is not mandatory at all.

To be clear, I was not arguing that keeping "all" was mandatory. What I meant is that simply removing "all”―without substituting it with an equivalent or adjusting the phrase accordingly―loses the meaning. What matters is that the French version matches the English version, or that it describes reality at least as well.

I struggle to see your point, but I did not mean to characterize the English version as perfect. In fact, I find that “Say All” sounds strange, although I imagine some would argue that “read” is not quite correct.🤔

A more literal translation would rather be "Dire Tout automatique au chargement de la page".

The literal translation would be:

Automatique Dire Tout sur page chargement

But that is not a proper label. Notably, Title Case is a feature of English, but should not be used in French, so “Say All” is not translated to “Dire Tout“.

Anyway, a better proposal can be discussed. Translations are usually not been discussed or worked on here in main NVDA GitHub repo.

I guess the French users mailing list (https://groups.io/g/nvda-fr) may be a most suitable place to discuss French translation. Alternatively, especially for quick fixes, you may write directly to me, to "cyrille dot bougot2 at laposte dot net", as I am currently the main NVDA French translator, especially regarding NVDA's GUI.

Thanks, but I value hygiene and consider transparency paramount. I do not report bugs to forums barring exceptional circumstances, but notifying the mailing list of this issue can be good. If you think this deserves a wider discussion, such as how to phrase the English version or how to translate Say All in general, feel free to consult there and Cc chealer@gmail.com if you wish (although I am neither a linguist nor knowledgeable about accessibility, so have limited qualifications to contribute).

If you think reporting French issues to this ITS is not optimal, please share and consider proposing to amend the Reporting issues or feature requests page.

At last, it seems to me that you are not an NVDA user yourself; no problem of course. But I am curious on how you got to NVDA and if you are trying to solve real-life issues encountered by NVDA users.

I am a user, but a most occasional one. The last ministry I served shipped buggy laptops to our direction. There was a buggy or misconfigured NVDA which narrated the lock screen. I eventually figured out NVDA was the “culprit” and discovered it a bit in the process of fixing that. This week, I saw an issue on the Creative Commons website and thought about using NVDA to test my understanding of web accessibility.

Thanks!

An honor―thanks to you