If I translate something like this: 

{!# [1:tutorial][?:tutorials]} is that going to mess something up? I want to change "tutorial" and "tutorials" to something else. But this looks like it is some kind of shortcode that would be called up.

No, you can translate that. It's part of a pluralizing function and would give something like "See tutorial" or "See tutorials", depending on how many there are. Feel free to change it to {!# [1:suggestion][?:suggestions]} etc as you require.