The content of the sms message is already an existing string in Signal which already has been localized. Currently it reads in English “Let’s switch to Signal: https://signal.org/install”. It is used to “invate a friend” (I would rather call that “invite an aquintance” but whatever")

In my overly critical opinion about various text strings, I thought it would be easier to understand for people who have no clue what Signal is, if it said “Let’s use Signal Private Messenger to chat: https://signal.org/install” because than it is clear that this message speajs of a messaging app, and the word ‘switch’ makes no sense if not used in anactive conversation.

But the string will be localized, and will be send in the language which thr sender of the sms has set his app to. In case the receiver soeaks a different language, the text can be altered manually. However, if you want to send the sms to multiple contacts with different words or in different languages, you will have to send sms messages one by one or in small groups. Signal doesn’t make that clear but exects users to think of that.

Anyway, I am not looking to again discuss semantics as I am dure the devs have taken notice already and there are more things to deal with in this beta. I am sure most of you noticed I keep an unfinished PR on github which contains proposed changes to text strings. I would rather finish that PR and leave it at that.

Edit:

The strings have been added to Transifex. I have just attempted to localize them, but they really don’t make sense. They look like someone with marketing education wrote them, and that is not a good thing. Some examples:

“Boost you Signal”

“Your Signal is strong”

“Signal’s advanced privacy-preserving technology automatically protected all of your recent outgoing messages.”

contains words without real meaning, and could have simply been

“Signal’s automatically protected all of your recent outgoing messages.”

Vague language will not be understood by everyone, and instead of instilling confidence in people that they know what is going on in their Signal-app, vague language contributes to confusion and translation errors, which will undermine the confidence users should have in the app.

I am sure best intentions were there, and this is only the first beta release, but I hope the team or person who writes strings like these will consider to be more direct, and use less marketing language next time. These strings probably need to be edited because they won’t make any sense if localized.