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There is a need of pagination wherein I am currently showing it as "Page {2} of {20}". While translating it in other languages (like Chinese), this phrase doesn't get translated correctly.

Options are:

  1. "Page {2}/{20}"
  2. "Page {2}...{20}"

Which one should be adopted?

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  • Is your problem about how to display the pagination or the language to be used ?
    – Mervin
    Sep 11, 2014 at 9:53
  • What is the problem with translating it?
    – unor
    Sep 11, 2014 at 15:36
  • @ Mervin: The problem is how to display the pagination.
    – Pratap Gadgil
    Sep 12, 2014 at 10:33
  • @unor: The translated phrase doesn't mean the same as it means in English
    – Pratap Gadgil
    Sep 12, 2014 at 10:33
  • @PratapGadgil: But why is this? Is your translation tool limited so that it can’t change markup positions? (if yes, shouldn’t you try to get a better translation system?)
    – unor
    Sep 12, 2014 at 14:33

3 Answers 3

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My recommendation would be to go with a visual representation which would translate across all the languages you are translating as opposed to doing a textual and visual translation like "Page" and the representation of the numbers.

The simpler approach of that would be to show the start and end pages and use ellipses to highlight the transition at some point. Here are some good examples taken from this smashing magazine article

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The second option you proposed ({2}...{20})is similar to the examples above but ensure users can choose some of the intermediate pages. The reason being if people are searching for something alphabetically, they can choose the intermediate pages to reach a certain listing which might be in those pages.

That said, users will rarely click to the last page and would rather prefer to do another search to find the results desired within the first few results. Hence showing the last page might not be useful if you have a lot of results. To quote this article

The first and last link is not necessary because most users prefer to look at content chronologically. There’s no reason for them to start from the last page unless they’re trying to find content from the past that they’ve already seen before. For those cases, you should have a search field in your navigation for that.

However, there is utility in giving users the option to go back to the first page. The first page often has the most relevant and recent content. After paginating the user might want to go back to the first page without having to click the “previous” link over and over. You should display the first page link as the number one with an ellipsis, such as “1…”. This way it won’t visually interfere with the “next” and “previous” links.

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  • There's a limitation of horizontal space and hence this option won't work. Also, the result is mainly numerical ID files and user may not remember which row exactly is the required one.
    – Pratap Gadgil
    Sep 12, 2014 at 10:37
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I assume you will allow the user to move backwards and forwards somehow. Can not a more standard pagination with the page numbers (1 2 3 4 5 6...) be used instead?

I am asking obviously without knowing the design implication of what you are trying to achieve.

The disadvantage with the approach you are planning is that if I wanted to go directly to page 1 from 10 I will not be able to do that.

I hope this help. Antonio

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  • There's a limitation of horizontal space and hence this option won't work :(
    – Pratap Gadgil
    Sep 12, 2014 at 10:38
  • We have a dropdown which user can use to jump to a particular page
    – Pratap Gadgil
    Sep 12, 2014 at 10:38
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Unless your page is not about "goal-oriented in finding tasks", you can try infinite scrolling or show a simple text such as "Show More" which will easily translate to other languages.

Here is an article on infinite scrolling and its applicability

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  • Unfortunately infinite scrolling is not an option as there's another component in the UI below this
    – Pratap Gadgil
    Sep 12, 2014 at 10:34

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