We're getting ready to translate our PHP website into various languages, and the gettext support in PHP looks like the way to go.
All the tutorials I see recommend using the english text as the message ID, i.e.
gettext("Hi there!")
But is that really a good idea? Let's say someone in marketing wants to change the text to "Hi there, y'all!". Then don't you have to update all the language files because that string -- which is actually the message ID -- has changed?
Is it better to have some kind of generic ID, like "hello.message", and an english translations file?
I use meaningful IDs such as "welcome_back_1" which would be "welcome back, %1" etc. I always have English as my "base" language so in the worst case scenario when a specific language doesn't have a message ID, I fall-back on English.
I don't like to use actual English phrases as message ID's because if the English changes so does the ID. This might not affect you much if you use some automated tools, but it bothers me. I don't like to use simple codes (like msg3975) because they don't mean anything, so reading the code is more difficult unless you litter comments everywhere.