From: Edward H Trager <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
On Fri, 13 Jun 2003, Danilo Segan wrote:
> The good side of this approach (the syntactic elements are arbitrary,
> don't comment on those) is that programs that use gettext for l10n would
> need no change: everything would be done on the gettext library side and
> by translators (it's even better than plural-forms in that manner). Of
> course, care should be taken to allow also combination of these and
> plural forms, as in:
> msgid "king"
> msgid_plural "kings"
> msgstr[0]<0> "kralj"
> msgstr[0]<5> "kraljem"
> msgstr[2]<0> "kraljevi"
> msgstr[2]<5> "kraljevima"
Why not just use another index for plural forms instead of "msgid_plural"?
While in many languages the pronounciation (and thus the spelling) differs
only between "singular" and "plural", there *ARE* also languages that
distinguish *MORE* forms, such as "singular", "two of an item", "plural
(being three or more of an item)".
In some languages the form of a noun depends on whether the object is
"here" or "there". In other languages it depends on whether it is "mine"
or "yours" or "his". Etc. etc.
Trying to translate word-for-word and then constructing sentences
out of word translations is doomed.
--
Linux-UTF8: i18n of Linux on all levels
Archive: http://mail.nl.linux.org/linux-utf8/
