Re: [Translation-i18n] Proposal for declinations in gettext

[Bruno Haible <bruno clisp org>]

Danilo Segan wrote:
> The usual practice among english-speaking programmers is to "compose"
> strings out of smaller parts.

You need to educate the programmer to use entire sentences. You can
refer them to the gettext documentation, section "Preparing Translatable
Strings". http://www.gnu.org/manual/gettext/html_chapter/gettext_3.html#SEC15

The reason is that in most languages sentences are not composed by
juxtaposition, as in English:
   - For Serbian, you have given examples.
   - In many languages, a verb's form is spelled differently depending
     on the gender of the subject.
   - In Latin, the combiner "and" comes as a suffix "-que".
   - Etc. etc.

> The translation for "Workspace %d" would look like:
> msgid "Workspace %d"
> msgstr<0> "der Workspace %d"
> msgstr<1> "das Workspace %d"
> msgstr<2> "dem Workspace %d"
> msgstr<3> "den Workspace %d"
>
> So, the title of "Workspace 5" would be "der Workspace 5", while the
> menu which allows switching to that workspace would read "Switch to den
> Workspace 5".

There are more bits of context that influence a translation than just a
declination. For example, the beginning of a sentence is special. To pursue
your example, an English programmer would be tempted to write

      "%<0>s is empty."

which would have the German translation

      "%<0>s ist leer."

and result in the final string

      "der Workspace %d is leer."

which is wrong because, in German, all sentences must start with a capital letter.

Bruno