Re: Translation problems with default location in Weather applet

[Simos Xenitellis <simos74 gmx net>]

Theppitak Karoonboonyanan wrote:

> On 12/31/05, Simos Xenitellis <simos74 gmx net> wrote:
>  
>
> > The following languages have some problem with the name of the default
> > location, "DEFAULT_LOCATION":
> > ar
> > az
> > bn
> > fa
> > gl
> > gu
> > he
> > ky
> > mk
> > ms
> > pa
> > rw
> > sq
> > ta
> > th
> > vi
> > zh_CN
> > zh_TW
> >
> > The translation should be in your own language/script. Please do not put
> > in English.
> >    
>
> If so, shouldn't this block in gweather_gconf_get_location() also be changed
> for parallelism?
>
> --- 8< ---
>    name = gweather_gconf_get_string (ctx, "location4", NULL);
>    if (!name)
>    {
>        /* TRANSLATOR: Change this to the default location name,
>         * used when you first start the Weather Applet. This is
>         * the common localised name that corresponds to
>         * the location code (DEFAULT_CODE) you will put on the next message
>         * For example, for the Greek locale, we set this to "Athens", the
>         * capital city and we write it in Greek. It's important to translate
>         * this name.
>         *
>         * If you do not require a DEFAULT_LOCATION, set this to
>         * "DEFAULT_LOCATION".
>         */
>        if (strcmp ("DEFAULT_LOCATION", _("DEFAULT_LOCATION")))
>            name = g_strdup (_("DEFAULT_LOCATION"));
>        else
>            name = g_strdup ("Pittsburgh");  /*** <-- It's in English here! ***/
>    }
> --- 8< ---
>
> That is, a change like this:
>
> --- 8< ---
> Index: libgweather/gweather-gconf.c
> ===================================================================
> RCS file: /cvs/gnome/gnome-applets/libgweather/gweather-gconf.c,v
> retrieving revision 1.4
> diff -u -r1.4 gweather-gconf.c
> --- libgweather/gweather-gconf.c        31 Dec 2005 10:00:44 -0000      1.4
> +++ libgweather/gweather-gconf.c        2 Jan 2006 16:23:20 -0000
> @@ -162,7 +162,7 @@
>         if (strcmp ("DEFAULT_LOCATION", _("DEFAULT_LOCATION")))
>  
If   the translator has translated the DEFAULT_LOCATION message (that 
is, she did not just type "DEFAULT_LOCATION" in the translation box),

>             name = g_strdup (_("DEFAULT_LOCATION"));
>  
then  use the translated text the translator has provided.

>         else
> -            name = g_strdup ("Pittsburgh");
> +            name = g_strdup (_("Pittsburgh"));
>  
else  just put the city of Pittsburgh. The choice of Pittsburgh probably 
comes from the original author of gweather, Spyros. This section is 
executed when the translator has not provided any default location and 
we would like the applet to work anyway. The end-user would have to 
change the location to something more sensible. Making that instance of 
Pittsburgh localisable is an option, however I would feel more 
confortable if translators would provided a sensible default location. 
In any case, if a translator went into the trouble to translate US 
cities like Pittsburgh, she surely has localised all the locations in 
her coutry anyway.

>     }
>
>     code = gweather_gconf_get_string (ctx, "location1", NULL);
> --- 8< ---
>
> To my common sense during maintaining the translation, however,
> defining DEFAULT_LOCATION in English just made perfect sense,
> since it's the language for internal communication between program
> modules. And the mentioned code just confirmed that. So, I didn't
> change the previous translator's string. But I appeared to be wrong.
>
> I'll fix the bug soon for Thai translation.
>  
Many thanks.

It might look strange, however, having the default location in the 
weather applet appear by default in the local script, and containing the 
most common location is a good tool when you present to new users.

Simos