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phpwordpresswordpress-theminggettext

Error: msgstr is not a valid PHP when translating a wordpress theme

I'm trying to translate a theme for WordPress using Poedit. When I try to translate % comment string, whether I use % in translation or not, I get this error:

Error: 'msgstr' is not a valid PHP format string, unlike 'msgid'.
Reason: The character that terminates the directive number 1 is not a valid conversion specifier.

That string's resource is line below:

comments_number(
    __( '0 comments' , 'hbthemes' ) ,
    __( '1 comment' , 'hbthemes' ),
    __( '% comments' , 'hbthemes' )
);

I took a look at gettext manual but didn't understand what would make these error. At first I wondered how just a single % could be in a format string, but the theme natively shows comments count correctly.

EDIT:

If I use %% instead of % in translation, the error remains and if I change it inside the PHP code, I get comments count twice, e.g. 22 instead of 2.

UPDATE:

The documentation here says % will be replaced by number of comments, so I think actual problem is with Poedit not the code.

Solution

  • The problem was with POEdit and by using another translation tool, I got what I was looking for.