On Sat, Sep 9, 2017 at 2:06 PM, Paul Licameli <paul.licam...@gmail.com>
wrote:
>
>
> On Sat, Sep 9, 2017 at 1:55 PM, Yuri Chornoivan <yurc...@ukr.net> wrote:
>
>> субота, 9 вересня 2017 р. 20:25:22 EEST Paul Licameli написано:
>> > From what little I know of languages, this question goes especially to
>> > Chinese and Russian translators, but maybe it is also relevant to other
>> > languages I know less about.
>> >
>> > I found a small gap in our translations. See the code below. "hour",
>> > "hours", "minute", "minutes" did not get extracted to the .pot file.
>> The
>> > intention is to compose strings like "1 hour and 2 minutes" from
>> > translations of pieces of the phrase.
>> >
>> > But I think it is better not to fix it by giving you four more little
>> words
>> > to translate. Rather, give a little more context. That is, make the
>> > pieces to translate a little bigger:
>> >
>> > 1 hour
>> > %d hours
>> > 1 minute
>> > %d minutes
>> >
>> > I am thinking, for instance, that good Chinese requires a "classifier"
>> word
>> > before "hours" or "minutes" -- but if I ask the Chinese translator just
>> for
>> > the word "hour" or "hours" out of context, I would be given a
>> translation
>> > without a classifier, and then assembling the pieces would not be good
>> > Chinese.
>> >
>> > // Use wxPLURAL to get strings
>> >
>> > sHours = wxPLURAL("hour", "hours", iHours);
>> >
>> > sMins = wxPLURAL("minute", "minutes", iMins);
>> >
>> >
>> > /* i18n-hint: A time in hours and minutes. Only translate the "and".
>> */
>> >
>> > sFormatted.Printf(_("%d %s and %d %s."), iHours, sHours, iMins,
>> sMins);
>> >
>> > return sFormatted;
>> >
>> > Below is another example of a translated phrase assembled from pieces,
>> but
>> > without regard to other grammars. The word "of" with no context is a
>> very
>> > poor thing to present to translators. Better in this case, I think,
>> that
>> > the strings be
>> >
>> > 1 of 1 clip
>> > %d of %d clips
>> >
>> > (and really the first isn't good English, perhaps it should be "sole
>> clip")
>> >
>> > I am thinking of a language like Russian where "clips" above would
>> properly
>> > be translated into genitive plural case, but "clips" without context is
>> > again a bad thing to present to the translator. The translator would
>> > probably give me nominative plural when there is no context.
>> >
>> > wxString temp;
>> >
>> > temp.Printf(wxT("%d %s %d %s "), result.index + 1, _("of"),
>> result.
>> > waveTrack->GetNumClips(),
>> >
>> > result.waveTrack->GetNumClips() == 1 ? _("clip") :
>> _("clips"));
>> >
>> > message += temp;
>> >
>> > Translators, can you name other examples like this? Are there other
>> > examples of English strings in the .pot file that are single words out
>> of
>> > context, which gave you doubts and difficulties about the right answers?
>> >
>> > Paul Licameli
>>
>> Hi,
>>
>> I see no problems with Slavic languages for such strings. And now it is
>> easy
>> to browse Audacity code to find the hints and answers when in doubt.
>>
>> For me, the bigger problem is the actual lack of true plural forms in
>> strings
>> like
>>
>> https://github.com/audacity/audacity/blob/master/src/import/
>> ImportRaw.cpp#L402
>>
>> chans.Add(wxString::Format(_("%d Channels"), i + 1));
>>
>> Actually, there are many languages in the world with more than 2 plural
>> forms
>> and several Audacity strings ignore this (they can easily be found by
>> searching "%d" in the POT-catalog).
>>
>
> "More than 2 plural forms" -- Do you mean, as in textbook Russian (I know
> some, I suppose Ukrainian is similar) -- when the phrase as a whole is
> nominative, then a noun may take nominative singular, genitive singular, or
> genitive plural, depending on the numeral?
>
I just Googled a bit and found this... Yes, as I guessed, Ukrainian has
complicated rules too, for corect noun case after a numeral...
http://ukrainiangrammar.com/article/2012-06-15/the-numeral-few-more-rules.html
So don't the translations sometimes seem a bit wrong when the program can't
make all the fine distinctions?
PRL
> I don't know a good way to program that difficult variation of forms into
> language-neutral code! All we can easily do is make a one versus many
> distinction.
>
> Or do you mean the entire phrase may be in some other case, where at least
> there is just the two way distinction. Which is a reason for giving a
> little bit of context for the noun to be translated, to get correct case.
>
> Or when you think of "more than 2 plural forms" is that something entirely
> different?
>
> PRL
>
>
>
>>
>> Best regards,
>> Yuri
>> Ukrainian translator
>>
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