A string that is localized by YaST2 via the gettext mechanism (see gettext and ngettext in libc for more informations). Basically a string to be translated via gettext must be enclosed in _(...) which causes gettext to look up the translated string. It is even possible to distinguish singular and plural verbalizations depending on a parameter that denotes the actual number of something.

For a simple number-independent string you write _(some_string_constant) which causes its translation.

If the string to be translated needs to be different depending on the multiplicity of something then you write _(singular_string_constant1, plural_string_constant2, actual_number). If actual_number equals 1 then the translation of the first string is used. Otherwise the translation of the second string is used.

Note 1: There are languages that distinguish more than the two cases singular and plural. Principally gettext can handle even those cases as it allows more than two strings for selection, but that is beyond the scope of this document (see the gettext documentation).

Note 2: It is not possible to put something other than string constants between the brackets.

_("Everybody likes Linux!")
_("An error has occurred.", "Some errors have occurred", error_count)