CC'd to gnome-commander developers! I bookmarked this thread, cause this is something sitting on my mind for a long time.
Slovenian language has 1 singular and 3 plural forms. ---------- In my experience, developers often try to "compact" the output, which does not work in Slovenian language and I also doubt it works in other. I have to brake grammar to make sense. Every counting number should have its own translatable line. Seahorse is a good example of how to do it correctly in some parts and also how to not do it correctly (#: ../plugins/nautilus/seahorse-tool-files.c:346) when they forget that there are more plurals in other languages! An example can be found in gnome-commander (far from being the worst one; It's just the one I'm currently working on!). Instead of: msgid "Deleted %ld of %ld file" msgid_plural "Deleted %ld of %ld files" There should be: msgid "Deleted %ld" msgid_plural "Deleted %ld" msgid_plural "of %ld file" msgid_plural "of %ld files" That would make sense when translated. The developers should not forget to write a comment about what the whole sentence looks like for each translatable line. That would produce now impossible correct sentence ... ---------- Problem with zero values is also very prominent! In plural: msgid "Found %d match - search aborted" msgid_plural "Found %d matches - search aborted" The correct msgid for value 0 is "No matches found - search aborted". In English "Found 0 matches" sounds far better then Slovenian translation. I'd suggest to optionally add "a plural" for zero values where %? counters can be omitted. ---------- There are also other grammatical issues concerning propositions in Slovenian language which I doubt that can be solved easily. In translations like the ones below, correctly translated string sound awful, cause propositions are bound to the first letter of the number. This really is "fancy", but I suggest that along with plurals, a system for dealing with this issues tries to get developed (The example is of course not considering correct plurals). msgid_plural "List with %d items" or msgid_plural "Attach to %d documents" msgid_plural "Seznam s %d predmeti" %d is 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 ... s should be %s msgid_plural "Seznam z %d predmeti" %d = 1 2 8 9 ... z should be %z msgid_plural "Pripni k %d dokumentom." %d is 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 .6 7 8 9 10 .. s should be %k msgid_plural "Pripni h %d dokumentom." %d = 1 2 8 9 ... z should be %h ---------- In libgnomedb a string would sound much better if the word sequence gets changed: msgid_plural "%d rows impacted\n" If the string would be: msgid_plural "impacted %d rows\n" the translation would be clearer. Unfortunately the usage is not commented and I do not know if I can change the word order. Every plural should have a comment! --------------------------- When I find other different examples I'll post them here. Matej _______________________________________________ gnome-i18n mailing list [email protected] http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-i18n
