DoodLoop glossary, European Portuguese (pt-PT)

Proposed terminology for the pt-PT localization. This needs review before the catalog is translated, because these terms repeat across roughly 414 strings and changing one afterwards means revisiting all of them.

Target is European Portuguese, not Brazilian. The house rules that follow from that, applied throughout:

Use	Not	Why
ficheiro	arquivo	arquivo is pt-BR, and in pt-PT it means an archive
guardar	salvar	salvar in pt-PT means to rescue
ecrã	tela	for the device screen (see the note on tela below)
utilizador	usuário	usuário is pt-BR
eliminar	deletar / apagar	deletar is an anglicism, and apagar is kept for erasing pixels

Register: impersonal infinitive

Recommendation: impersonal infinitive for buttons and actions (Eliminar, Guardar, Exportar), never tu forms (Elimina, Guarda).

The brief notes DoodLoop skews playful and younger, which is a fair argument for tu. I am still recommending the infinitive, for three reasons:

1. It is what the platform does. iOS itself, the Files app, the share sheet and every system dialog DoodLoop sits inside use the infinitive in pt-PT. An app that says Elimina beside a system sheet that says Eliminar reads as sloppy rather than friendly.
2. The playfulness is not in the verbs. DoodLoop's warmth lives in its explanatory copy ("Drag over your art to smear it"), and that copy can stay warm in translation regardless of how the buttons are phrased. Nothing is lost.
3. tu forces a gender and familiarity decision on every sentence and is read as markedly childish by older users, who are a real part of the audience for an animation app.

Explanatory sentences use pode + infinitive (Pode importar fotografias…), which stays friendly without committing to tu or the more formal você (itself pt-BR-coded in this register).

Applied consistently, with no mixing.

Core terms

English	pt-PT	Why
onion skin	onion skin	Decided: kept in English. The calque casca de cebola is correct and used, but the term stays English for recognisability and to protect the toolbar layout (15 chars against 10).
rotoscope	rotoscope (noun) / see note	Decided: kept in English. Works as a noun, as in Vídeo (rotoscope). See "The rotoscope verb" below for the one place this needs care.
frame	fotograma	Decided. The correct cinematic term in pt-PT. quadro is the pt-BR choice and reads as "square/picture" here. Applies to all 25 strings, and to fotogramas in the plural forms.
keyframe	fotograma-chave	Follows from fotograma. Hyphenated per pt-PT compounding.
layer	camada	Standard across Photoshop, GIMP and Procreate in pt. Uncontroversial.
brush	pincel	pincel is the artist's brush. Do not use escova, which is a hairbrush or scrubbing brush.
eraser	borracha	The object. The action of erasing is apagar, which is why apagar is reserved and eliminar is used for deletion.
lasso	laço	The selection tool. Established in image editors.
canvas	tela	Deliberate exception to the tela rule. For the artist's drawing surface tela is exactly right in pt-PT: it is the painter's canvas. The rule against tela applies only to the device screen, which is ecrã. Both words appear in this app and they are not interchangeable.
timelapse	timelapse	Kept in English. It is the term used in pt-PT photography and video, and lapso de tempo would not be recognised as the feature.
blend mode	modo de fusão	Matches Photoshop pt-PT. mistura is understandable but non-standard here.
opacity	opacidade	Direct cognate, standard.
symmetry	simetria	Direct cognate, standard.
ruler	régua	The drawing guide. Standard.
fill (tool)	balde de tinta	The tool is the paint bucket. Translating the tool as bare preencher (a verb) leaves a tool palette with an infinitive sitting among nouns.
fill (action, e.g. "Fill whole layer")	preencher	The verb, used where the English is an action rather than the tool's name. The English "Fill" is doing two jobs, and Portuguese should not pretend it is one.
stroke	traço	The mark a brush leaves. Not golpe (a blow) and not curso.
playback	reprodução	Standard media term.
loop	repetição / em ciclo	repetição as a noun for the setting, and em ciclo where the English is adverbial. Note the product name DoodLoop is never translated.
export	exportar	Standard.
trash	reciclagem	The pt-PT system term for the Recycle Bin is Reciclagem. lixo is the pt-BR choice and also just means rubbish. Matching the platform matters here because the feature mirrors the system one.

Decisions taken

• frame → fotograma, throughout, including plural fotogramas.
• onion skin, rotoscope and timelapse stay in English.
• Register: impersonal infinitive, as argued above.

The rotoscope verb

Keeping rotoscope English works wherever it is a noun, which is almost everywhere: Vídeo (rotoscope) reads fine.

There is one place it is a verb, and English verbs do not conjugate in Portuguese. The photo library permission string says "or to rotoscope (trace) over them frame by frame". para rotoscope sobre elas is not Portuguese.

Handled by turning the verb into a noun phrase, which keeps the English term visible while staying grammatical:

...ou para fazer rotoscope (decalcar) sobre elas, fotograma a fotograma.

fazer rotoscope is how the loanword is actually used as a verb in Portuguese studio speech. If you would rather this one instance read rotoscopia, say so and it is a one-line change. Flagging it because this string is read by App Review, so it is the worst place to have awkward grammar.

Layout risk

Portuguese runs roughly 15 to 25% longer than English. The terms above that land in dense toolbars are worth watching once translated:

• casca de cebola (15 chars) against Onion skin (10)
• balde de tinta (14) against Fill (4)
• modo de fusão (13) against Blend (5)
• reprodução (10) against Play (4)

EditorToolbars, FloatingToolPanel, ToolSettingsControls and LayersPanel are the crowded ones. Per the brief I will report any breakage with a screenshot rather than redesigning the layout.

Note on two English keys

The catalog currently holds Onion Skin and Onion skin as separate keys, and likewise Frame Rate and Frame rate. They are the same words with different capitalisation, so each will be translated twice and can drift apart. Harmonising them is an English copy change, which the brief placed out of scope, so they are flagged here rather than fixed.