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French designers! Help me find a good name for my Chrome extension

5 years ago from , Digital Product Designer

I released a Chrome extension last year called Measure in English. Even though there's not much to it, I'd like to localise it in French, but need a little help working out what the best name would be in French.

"Measure" works well for me in English because it's a verb and correct typographic term for what the tool attempts to count, and it's a single word which is always nice and catchy. I've struggled to find an equivalent term in French, however. With "mesure" obviously not being a correct translation in regards to line length and typography.

I've had a few suggestions, such as: - Signes par ligne - Longueur de la ligne - Justification (there seemed to be a bit of overlap when I was reading that this could also apply to line length, not just alignment, but I might be wrong)

But I'm not really convinced. Any thoughts from any French designers?

Measure

7 comments

  • Sacha GreifSacha Greif, 5 years ago

    Most design apps don't localize their names so I'm not sure if you need to worry about this at all. After all you don't open "Boutique de Photos" to retouch some pictures…

    11 points
  • Florent Lenormand, 5 years ago

    What do you think about "Caractère"? Your plugin counts the number of characters and the translation in French is "Caractère". Like in english, "caractère" means a letter but also qualities distinctive to an individual (Avoir du caractère).

    That's sound great in french!

    5 points
  • G Juchault, 5 years ago

    « Signes par ligne » is indeed the correct translation, but is that a good name ? Would you have called your extension « Words per line » ? It's kinda too "raw" to me. « Justification » is indeed strictly related to alignment.

    I'd go for : « Mesure ». It means « Measure » in english, so you kinda already know what it means. You can « mesure » a line characters count, so that's kinda good.

    3 points
  • Eric Pringels, 5 years ago

    "Justification" is strictly related to alignement. "Signes par lignes" is much better.

    2 points
  • Gaël PGaël P, 5 years ago

    Justification seems to be the right word. I've checked in two different typography guides (one French, one Swiss). It does refer to the alignement of the paragraph as well, because both would have been specified together in lead type composition. I personally associate it more with alignement, word and character spacing because of InDesign.

    Signes par ligne or Caractères par ligne is more precise. I'd go with the first one for brevity.

    1 point