Re: More string changes for the orca module.

["Christian Rose" <menthos gnome org>]

On 7/13/06, Rich Burridge <Rich Burridge sun com> wrote:
> The .../src/orca/scripts/gaim.py file has the following new strings:

As Andre said, some of these new messages appear to be very broken
from a i18n point of view:

> "Don't "
> "Message from chat room "

A golden rule when marking messages for translation is that sentences
should be self-contained. In other words, concatenating pieces of a
sentence together is a big no-no
(http://developer.gnome.org/doc/tutorials/gnome-i18n/developer.html#split-sentences).
This is because word order, genders, and other grammatic rules vary a
lot between languages, so there is no way to assume in what form a
given word or sentence fragment should be used in any language, or
where it should be placed inside the sentence.

To solve this, use a *printf-style approach if necessary:

line = _("Do not speak chat room name.")
line = _("Message from chat room %s.") % chatRoomName

This will allow the translator to place the %s wherever necessary in
the translated string.


Christian