Re: [translate-pootle] [Translation-i18n] gettext with non-en source language
29 січня 2007 о 14:13 + MJ Ray написав(-ла): Could the gettext manual be clearer and state that it is possible? English-language advocacy seems particularly inappropriate there of all places. It's only posible if: 1. You do not use non-ascii characters, otherwise your program will work with only one encoding (for source languages, it will work as expected for translations). 2. Source language has the same rules for singular/plural as English (nplurals=2; plural = n != 1). It will work for Esperanto, according to gettext doc. It will work for languages that do not have plural (Japanese,...), but in this case you'll need repeat the string. But go try to create pot file with Ukrainian as source language with 3 forms. -- Eugeniy Meshcheryakov signature.asc Description: Digital signature - Take Surveys. Earn Cash. Influence the Future of IT Join SourceForge.net's Techsay panel and you'll get the chance to share your opinions on IT business topics through brief surveys - and earn cash http://www.techsay.com/default.php?page=join.phpp=sourceforgeCID=DEVDEV___ Translate-pootle mailing list Translate-pootle@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/translate-pootle
Re: [translate-pootle] [Translation-i18n] gettext with non-en source language
Sorry it's taken me so long to answer this. On 04/10/2006, at 2:11 AM, Martin v. Löwis wrote: Jean-Christophe Helary schrieb: There is tremendous localization activity in African countries (not limited to South Africa) and other developer-poor areas. See Javier Sola's work in Cambodia. Of course, people who work on localization create pools of users and developers who do not need to communicate in English. Do you see a lot of Chinese developers on the net expressing themselves in English ? If you do are they not only the tip of an iceberg of Chinese only (or close) developers who do not feel the need to share with English only (or close) developers ? This is more-and-more getting off-topic. However, I see no problem with the gettext documentation (which is written in English) stating that msgids should be English (or a language close to it, like Computer English :-). Users which can't understand English won't see that recommendation. Users which understand and disagree are free to write their own alternative recommendations, in a language more likely adequate for their audience. I don't think that's entirely a safe assumption, Martin. The original version of any text (usually English so far in free software) is taken as the model. Translator _translate_ it, they don't change its meaning. In any case, we don't want competing documentation in different languages: we want localization to propagate definitive information, not diverge from it. So the original text (the model) needs to be written in a way that either covers the main issues, or requests that the missing ones be described as a supplement. Languages other than English are already being used as the original stringset; they are also being used as secondary languages in translations. We have been told by representatives of several cultures that these modifications are not only useful but necessary. So I think a statement in the gettext manual that original strings, while so far usually in English, may be expressed in other languages (augmented with details as they appear), and a reference to the possible use of an intermediate language in translations, would reflect the current usage and not detract from the main intent of the document. from Clytie (vi-VN, Vietnamese free-software translation team / nhóm Việt hóa phần mềm tự do) http://groups-beta.google.com/group/vi-VN - Take Surveys. Earn Cash. Influence the Future of IT Join SourceForge.net's Techsay panel and you'll get the chance to share your opinions on IT business topics through brief surveys -- and earn cash http://www.techsay.com/default.php?page=join.phpp=sourceforgeCID=DEVDEV ___ Translate-pootle mailing list Translate-pootle@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/translate-pootle
Re: [translate-pootle] [Translation-i18n] gettext with non-en source language
Jean-Christophe Helary wrote: In the next decades and starting very soon, the world's most understood languages will be Chinese and Hindi, and especially those two will have a huge influence on the IT world. And only the people who don't read Chinese on Hindi are blind to that. It is very short sighted to not take that into account. Chinese and Hindi the most understood languages of the world? I doubt that. Languages have in the past spread 1. through conquests, 2. through culture (music, literature, cinema, ...). China (PRC) is an aggressive state (*), but IMO it will not conquer the U.S. nor Europe in the next 50 years; and India is not an aggressive state. Chinese culture is mostly unknown in the rest of the world. Indian culture spreads out, but very slowly; Bollywood will take a long time to replace Hollywood. The influence of languages is large in IT world if 1. the language is wide-spread in general, or 2. the language is wide-spread in IT, or 3. the top computer scientists come from a culture that speaks this language. Neither the Chinese nor the Hindi language fits these criteria. Bruno (*) Don't forget that 3000 students were murdered by the government of the People's Republic of China in June 1989! - Take Surveys. Earn Cash. Influence the Future of IT Join SourceForge.net's Techsay panel and you'll get the chance to share your opinions on IT business topics through brief surveys -- and earn cash http://www.techsay.com/default.php?page=join.phpp=sourceforgeCID=DEVDEV ___ Translate-pootle mailing list Translate-pootle@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/translate-pootle
Re: [translate-pootle] [Translation-i18n] gettext with non-en source language
On Do, 2006-09-28 at 13:46 +0200, Bruno Haible wrote: Christian Rose wrote: gettext's English-centredness (which to large parts is historical, but in some cases still exists, like in the handling of plural forms) is both a blessing for our community where English is the UI default, as much as it is a nuisance in other real-life software development where the local language is the one that is targeted primarily, and is the one that you would want in the msgids and base your other future translations on. What you call gettext's English-centredness is only a recommendation in the doc. You _can_ use another language as the language of the source files and the msgids in the PO files. Did you try it? Did you encounter problems? Well, I did not try it, but the example used here (Czech as source language) won't work, because it has three plural forms. So I would say it is more than just a recommendation. I guess there is no real reason why languages with the exact same plural equation as English can't be used, but this will even exclude for example French which handles 0 differently. Sure there are people who start a web server software in Czech and then want to localize it to German. They can do so. But I will not recommend in the gettext doc to do like this. English and American are the world's most understood languages nowadays and for the next decades, not Czech, German, Spanish or whatever. It is short-sighted to start a fresh project with user interface strings in any other language than English. Bruno Except if the programmers can't write English, in which case it makes perfect sense to use what they can. I agree with your recommendation, though, don't get me wrong. I foresee a possible scenario for example where someone in francophone Africa writes in French which will be the common language to use to translate into local languages. Not the best choice to get you translations in all the world's languages, perhaps, but the correct choice for their circumstances. I'm speaking quite hypothetical now, of course. Although it would be interesting to see how many people will be able to contribute for the first time if understanding of English is removed as obstacle. - Take Surveys. Earn Cash. Influence the Future of IT Join SourceForge.net's Techsay panel and you'll get the chance to share your opinions on IT business topics through brief surveys -- and earn cash http://www.techsay.com/default.php?page=join.phpp=sourceforgeCID=DEVDEV ___ Translate-pootle mailing list Translate-pootle@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/translate-pootle
Re: [translate-pootle] [Translation-i18n] gettext with non-en source language
On 26 sept. 06, at 22:35, Bruno Haible wrote: MJ Ray asked: Question raised on -l10n-esperanto recently: can gettext be used for localising a program with a utf-8 non-English source language? That is, the thing in the _(...) has accents and isn't English. Technically, it is possible to use a non-English source language. You have to be careful to - pass --from-code=UTF-8 to xgettext when creating the PO files, - always keep the PO files in UTF-8 encoding, never convert them to ISO-8859-1 or so. The bigger problem is to get translators which understand this non-English language. Translators from, say, Spanish to Hungarian are more difficult to find than translators from English to Hungarian. But even if that were the case, one would still need to translate the original strings to English to have access to a bigger pool of translators... So one should assume that the premise for the original question is that they _have_ access to a number of translators from this non- English language. It reminds me of the text on the GNU Gettext page: Usually, programs are written and documented in English, and use English at execution time for interacting with users. I don't know when this text has been written, but it clearly is not true in 2006. Jean-Christophe Helary - Take Surveys. Earn Cash. Influence the Future of IT Join SourceForge.net's Techsay panel and you'll get the chance to share your opinions on IT business topics through brief surveys -- and earn cash http://www.techsay.com/default.php?page=join.phpp=sourceforgeCID=DEVDEV ___ Translate-pootle mailing list Translate-pootle@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/translate-pootle
Re: [translate-pootle] [Translation-i18n] gettext with non-en source language
MJ Ray asked: Question raised on -l10n-esperanto recently: can gettext be used for localising a program with a utf-8 non-English source language? That is, the thing in the _(...) has accents and isn't English. Technically, it is possible to use a non-English source language. You have to be careful to - pass --from-code=UTF-8 to xgettext when creating the PO files, - always keep the PO files in UTF-8 encoding, never convert them to ISO-8859-1 or so. The bigger problem is to get translators which understand this non-English language. Translators from, say, Spanish to Hungarian are more difficult to find than translators from English to Hungarian. Bruno - Take Surveys. Earn Cash. Influence the Future of IT Join SourceForge.net's Techsay panel and you'll get the chance to share your opinions on IT business topics through brief surveys -- and earn cash http://www.techsay.com/default.php?page=join.phpp=sourceforgeCID=DEVDEV ___ Translate-pootle mailing list Translate-pootle@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/translate-pootle
Re: [translate-pootle] [Translation-i18n] gettext with non-en source language
On 9/26/06, Bruno Haible [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The bigger problem is to get translators which understand this non-English language. Translators from, say, Spanish to Hungarian are more difficult to find than translators from English to Hungarian. That is not always the case. It may be the case in English-speaking countries, but if I live in Hungary, a quick glance in the local yellow pages looking for Spanish translators will probably give me more results for Spanish to Hungarian translators, rather than Spanish to English to Hungarian translators... gettext's English-centredness (which to large parts is historical, but in some cases still exists, like in the handling of plural forms) is both a blessing for our community where English is the UI default, as much as it is a nuisance in other real-life software development where the local language is the one that is targeted primarily, and is the one that you would want in the msgids and base your other future translations on. Christian - Take Surveys. Earn Cash. Influence the Future of IT Join SourceForge.net's Techsay panel and you'll get the chance to share your opinions on IT business topics through brief surveys -- and earn cash http://www.techsay.com/default.php?page=join.phpp=sourceforgeCID=DEVDEV ___ Translate-pootle mailing list Translate-pootle@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/translate-pootle
