Incorrect translation of the phrase "non-whitespace"

[mfranzke]

MDN-URL

https://developer.mozilla.org/de/docs/Web/CSS/:-moz-first-node

Um welchen spezifischen Abschnitt oder welche Überschrift geht es bei diesem Problem?

Einleitung

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The english sentence "It differs from :first-child because it does not match a first-child element with (non-whitespace) text before it." has been translated to "Sie unterscheidet sich von :first-child, da sie kein erstes Kindelement erfasst, dem (nicht-weißer) Text vorausgeht."

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I would have expected that english phrase "non-whitespace" out of the sentence "It differs from :first-child because it does not match a first-child element with (non-whitespace) text before it." would been translated to e.g. "exklusive Leerzeichen", "außer Leerzeichen" or "exklusive Leerzeichen" or something similar, resulting in "Sie unterscheidet sich von :first-child, da sie kein erstes Kindelement erfasst, dem Text (außer Leerzeichen) vorausgeht."

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MDN-Metadaten

Page report details

• Folder: de/web/css/_colon_-moz-first-node
• MDN URL: https://developer.mozilla.org/de/docs/Web/CSS/:-moz-first-node
• GitHub URL: https://github.com/mdn/translated-content-de/blob/main/files/de/web/css/_colon_-moz-first-node/index.md
• Last commit: 0eedbde
• Document last modified: 2025-10-25T00:28:10.000Z

[caugner]

Meanwhile, the translation improved somewhat:

Sie unterscheidet sich von :first-child, da sie kein erstes Kind-Element abgleicht, das (nicht-leeren) Text davor hat.

I'm not sure "Leerzeichen" is ideal, because it's ambiguous (can mean space or whitespace), so an alternative might be to just use the English word ("Whitespace") for clarity. Obviously, the glossary entry for Whitespace should mention the original term as well, but the translation prompt has not been optimized for specific page types, such as glossary pages, and it does not use a translation glossary.

[mfranzke]

Meanwhile, the translation improved somewhat:

Sie unterscheidet sich von :first-child, da sie kein erstes Kind-Element abgleicht, das (nicht-leeren) Text davor hat.

I'm not sure "Leerzeichen" is ideal, because it's ambiguous (can mean space or whitespace), so an alternative might be to just use the English word ("Whitespace") for clarity. Obviously, the glossary entry for Whitespace should mention the original term as well, but the translation prompt has not been optimized for specific page types, such as glossary pages, and it does not use a translation glossary.

@caugner thanks a lot for bringing this up. I needed to look up the exact technical terms, and mainly found the following two sources, that brought some more clarity:

• https://www.typolexikon.de/leerraumzeichen/
• https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leerraum

"Leerraumzeichen" seemed to be a good translation in the first place, but still only seem to refer to spaces (which to my understanding we'd like to avoid as we want to provide a reference to "whitespace" instead of "space", if I'm not mistaken). The best effort might be "Leerraum" according to the Wikipedia entry.

What about providing both words, "Leerraum" and "Whitespace" in these brackets, is this something you do in MDN for clarity and even also providing a technical term in the translated language?
Elsewhere I'm perfectly fine with only mentioning "Whitespace" as well; I was mainly confused by the initial translation, even though that I now understand it's background better after doing some further research.