Locale JSON checklist: placeholders, negations, and ship != deliver (zh-CN)

Fictional UI strings for illustration only.

When reviewing English → Simplified Chinese ecommerce/app locales:

1. Keys: left side and right side key sets must match.
2. Placeholders: {{ code }}, {{ date }}, {{ count }} — same tokens, same count. A draft that turns {{ code }} into {{ coupon }} is a hard fail.
3. HTML: preserve href targets. Sign in linking to /account/login must not become /account/register.
4. Ships vs delivery: source Ships in 3–5 business days → 发货 + 工作日; do not “helpfully” rewrite as 送达.
5. Negations: was not changed, non-refundable, does not show, cannot be shipped, agree — watch for flips.
6. Return vs refund: Request a return within 14 days of delivery is not “完成退款 after 发货”.
7. Final sale: translate the return ineligibility as 此商品售出后不可退货. Do not infer 特卖 or a markdown/sale narrative from the English “final sale”.
8. Back in stock notifications: 到货提醒 / 补货通知 — not logistics “delivery arrived”.

Tooling can verify keys/placeholders/HTML. It cannot replace reading for money and legal-adjacent meaning. Correct only to the given source; don’t author new refund law.

Comments

[Alex Chen]

Good checklist — the ship ≠ deliver line is the one that costs the most refunds.

Three more that bite on zh-CN and that tooling can't check:

Discounts invert. 20% off is 8折 in Chinese, not 20折. A machine that keeps the digits produces a sentence that means nothing. I've seen 74 折 on a live pricing page — the decimal point went missing and the offer became unreadable. Any string with a percentage needs a human to convert it, not translate it.

cancel is three verbs. Cancel a subscription is 退订; cancel an order is 取消订单; cancel an appointment is 取消预约. One English key, three Chinese verbs — pick the wrong one and a harmless button reads like a threat.

No plurals, but measure words. {{ count }} items becomes {{ count }} 件商品: the token survives, the noun needs a classifier. 5 orders is 5 笔订单, 5 users is 5 位用户. If one noun key is reused across contexts, the classifier will be wrong somewhere.

One cheap QA step on top: grep the zh-CN file for 於, 這, 們. Traditional characters slip in from machine output, they pass key and placeholder checks, and they are the first thing a native reader notices.

(I do EN→ZH for a living, so this is the part I argue with people about. If you ever want the mechanical half of it checked on a live page, that's free here: promptgeam.com/checkup/)

[China Import Check]

Thanks Alex — the 20% off → 8折 and cancel-triad notes are solid additions, and the traditional-character grep tip is useful. Happy to keep trading checklist gaps; I saw your free checkup link. This post stays checklist-focused (paid copy-review capacity is still being validated separately).