Terminology

To reduce user confusion when switching between clients, it is good to use only recommended terms.

Historic/protocol terms Recommended user-facing terms
MUC, Room, Chatroom, Conference Group chat or Channel1 (see Multi-user Chats)
Occupant Participant
JID Address or XMPP address
Roster Contact list
Avatar Profile picture

Note: The recommendations only apply to user-facing text, such as application UIs and other content directed towards end users. There is no intent to change the language used by developers for discussing protocol elements2. This is why you will still see terms such as "JID" used across the developer-oriented documentation of this project, for example.

Translation

Most XMPP Clients are distributed in multiple languages. In the process of translating a client, people with various backgrounds (not necessarily XMPP-related) are contributing translations. This table of terms (German, French and Spanish to begin with) aims to be a reference for recommended translations in the future.

At the moment, this table intends to support discussing the translation of key terms. Discuss with us!

English term German French Spanish Portuguese Japanese Arabic
Group chat Gruppenchat Groupe Grupo de chat Grupo de conversa グループチャット مجموعة
Channel Channel Salon Canal Canal チャンネル قناة
Participant Teilnehmer Participant Participantes Participantes 参加者 عضو
Address or XMPP address XMPP-Adresse Adresse XMPP Dirección XMPP Endereço XMPP XMPPアドレス عنوان XMPP
Contact list Kontaktliste Liste de contacts Lista de contactos Lista de contactos 連絡帳 جهات الاتصال
Profile picture Profilbild プロフィーロ写真 الصورة الشخصية

You’ll find more terms in the term overview.

Add a language...


  1. Rationale group chat terminology 

  2. General agreement is that this would only cause confusion, for little gain. See e.g. discussion at https://github.com/modernxmpp/modernxmpp/pull/23