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I encountered at least one other problem with a construction of a line: #: Mailman/HTMLFormatter.py:78 msgid "<em>(%(num_concealed)d private member%(plu)s not shown)</em>" msgstr "<em>(%(num_concealed)d privé lid/leden niet getoond)</em>" The dutch plural of member ('lid') is not created by adding an 's' (it's "leden".) In fact, it's generally not true that "s" makes the best plurals ("en" would be better, in Dutch, though that wouldn't fix it in this case.) Barry, shall I just rewrite such cases to make them more easily translatable? -- Thomas Wouters <thomas@xs4all.net> Hi! I'm a .signature virus! copy me into your .signature file to help me spread!
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I encountered at least one other problem with a construction of a line:
#: Mailman/HTMLFormatter.py:78 msgid "<em>(%(num_concealed)d private member%(plu)s not shown)</em>" msgstr "<em>(%(num_concealed)d privé lid/leden niet getoond)</em>"
The dutch plural of member ('lid') is not created by adding an 's' (it's "leden".) In fact, it's generally not true that "s" makes the best plurals ("en" would be better, in Dutch, though that wouldn't fix it in this case.)
Barry, shall I just rewrite such cases to make them more easily translatable?
Getting this right is non-trivial: a number of languages (e.g. Russian) have more than two forms that depend on number, e.g. 1, 2-4, and 5 or more; sometimes these repeat following certain formulas, e.g. 101 might require the same grammatical form as 1. The gettext manual gives the Polish example In Polish we use e.g. plik (file) this way: 1 plik 2,3,4 pliki 5-21 pliko'w 22-24 pliki 25-31 pliko'w and so on (o' means 8859-2 oacute which should be rather okreska, similar to aogonek). The new GNU gettext makes an attempt to solve this; it introduces a function ngettext which allows to write printf (ngettext ("%d file removed", "%d files removed", n), n); These two strings are the English fallbacks in case no translation is available. In addition, the header of the PO file gets an additional field Plural-Forms, which may read Plural-Forms: nplurals=2; plural=n == 1 ? 0 : 1; Other definitions may read Plural-Forms: nplurals=2; plural=n>1; e.g. for French (0 and 1 are "singular"), Plural-Forms: nplurals=3; \ plural=n%10==1 && n%100!=11 ? 0 : \ n%10>=2 && n%10<=4 && (n%100<10 || n%100>=20) ? 1 : 2; e.g. for Czech, Russian, Slovak, Ukrainian, etc; see the gettext manual of 0.10.38 for further elaboration. Finally, the actual msgstrs for the plural forms are listed using an indexed syntax, i.e. msgid UNTRANSLATED-STRING-SINGULAR msgid_plural UNTRANSLATED-STRING-PLURAL msgstr[0] TRANSLATED-STRING-CASE-0 ... msgstr[N] TRANSLATED-STRING-CASE-N People have varying opinions about the complexity of this technology. I'm not proposing that Python gettext supports the same notation - I just point out that plurals are more difficult than you may think they are. Regards, Martin
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"TW" == Thomas Wouters <thomas@xs4all.net> writes:
TW> The dutch plural of member ('lid') is not created by adding an TW> 's' (it's "leden".) In fact, it's generally not true that "s" TW> makes the best plurals ("en" would be better, in Dutch, though TW> that wouldn't fix it in this case.) TW> Barry, shall I just rewrite such cases to make them more TW> easily translatable? Yes, I think that's fine.
"MvL" == Martin von Loewis <loewis@informatik.hu-berlin.de> writes:
MvL> Getting this right is non-trivial: a number of languages MvL> (e.g. Russian) have more than two forms that depend on MvL> number, e.g. 1, 2-4, and 5 or more; sometimes these repeat MvL> following certain formulas, e.g. 101 might require the same MvL> grammatical form as 1. [Martin goes on to explain the scary increase in gettext complexity.] <shudder> Let's just do the best we can for now. Adding all this complexity to the toolset right now worries me. I think/hope we can work around most of it by rewriting the code. I also hope that it isn't a huge or common problem. Definitely assuming that a trailing `s' makes a word plural is a quaint English tradition that we should fix in the code where possible. -Barry
participants (3)
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barry@zope.com
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Martin von Loewis
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Thomas Wouters