On Sat, Sep 9, 2017 at 3:53 PM, Yuri Chornoivan <yurc...@ukr.net> wrote:
> субота, 9 вересня 2017 р. 22:18:59 EEST Paul Licameli написано:
> > But I see you, Yuri, didn't bother with the distinction:
> >
> > Час початку = %2d годин, %2d хвилин, %.2f секунд.
> >
> > But then again here is another example where you did:
> >
> > Successfully exported the following %lld file(s).
> > Успішно експортовано %lld файл(ів) з наведеного нижче списку.
> >
> > So perhaps in your judgment one rule applies for time, which is
> continuous,
> > but another for a count of files. Is the last a sufficiently acceptable
> > un-stupid-looking convention? (Even though файл and файлів are not the
> > only possible forms?)
>
> No. That was the trade-off. All cases are wrong in some way, so I chose the
> most likely values (0 hours, > 4 minutes, > 4 seconds) when the string
> should
> be concise and alternative with two of three possible cases when it is not.
>
> > Perhaps trying to vary "hour" with "hours" in code is too much and too
> > English-biased and should just be avoided everywhere.
> > Perhaps what really should be done is consistent use of the "(s)"
> > convention wherever we have "%d". Leave it to translator's discretion
> > what to do with it.
> >
> > And such problems can hardly be unique to Audacity. If you have
> experience
> > contributing to translations of other programs, tell me something about
> > their approaches to this.
>
> This should be something like wxPLURAL as I mentioned earlier
>
> http://docs.wxwidgets.org/3.0/group__group__funcmacro__string.html
>
> wxPLURAL( "%d Channel", "%d Channels", i+1) instead of _()
>
> Other projects (Gtk+- or Qt-based) handle this cases fine as well.
>
> Gettext/Gtk+:
>
> https://www.gnu.org/savannah-checkouts/gnu/gettext/manual/
> html_node/Plural-forms.html
>
> Qt/KDE:
>
> http://doc.qt.io/qt-5/i18n-source-translation.html#handling-plurals
>
> https://techbase.kde.org/Development/Tutorials/Localization/i18n#Plurals
>
> It would be good if Audacity can handle this as well. ;)
>
> Anyway, thanks for your help to make things better.
>
The "(s)" convention was invented before computers for filling in blanks in
paper forms, and I thought other languages might have similarly old and
well accepted conventions, like "(ів)", even if they don't read quite as
good prose would.
It seems to me that wxPLURAL is still an imperfect thing for Ukrainian,
still biased to Western European languages that never need more than two
number forms of a noun, and not better or worse than a "(s)" (or "(ів)")
convention.
And I also recall that some languages have a distinct dual number. Is
using plural for exactly two bad in modern Arabic?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_(grammatical_number)#Use_in_modern_languages
The ideal would seem to be a function from the number to one of a list
forms, the size of the list varying with the language, and each translator
programming that little function!
Of course we can't go there. So your vote is for more consistent usage of
wxPLURAL in our code, and the Basque example from Osoitz E would suggest
the same. A cleanup project for us in the next version.
There are only two uses of wxPLURAL in Audacity now, and I notice that the
.pot file omitted the strings, but now I see that was not the fault of the
wxPLURAL macro, but rather that _() was omitted around the arguments of
it. So, I can at least add those few strings to the list to be translated.
PRL
>
> Best regards,
> Yuri
>
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