Re: Translations, GNOME, and KDE

[Telsa Gwynne <hobbit aloss ukuu org uk>]

On Fri, Jan 09, 2004 at 11:15:44AM +0000 or thereabouts, Bill Haneman wrote:
> Murray Cumming Comneon com wrote:
> 
> > Translated error messages actually make bug tracking more 
> > difficult, though that's unavoidable for real user-visable 
> > error messages.
> >
> Right.  Though two possible solutions occur to me:
> 
> (2) one could make a reverse-lookup tool that turned a 
> localized message into its C equivalent msgid.  Of course 
> that'd depend on stable error messages and/or the 
> application and version.  

We have regularly had Bugzilla reports either completely
in one language or with an attempt to write in English 
(as per bug-buddy's request). In either case they came 
with a localised error message. 

If there is no-one around to translate it, yes, I used to
grab the po file and pray they had pasted the message 
exactly as it appeared. It was generally a successful
way to find the original string: much more successful
than I might have feared.  

> Also previously discussed here (I think) was an 
> 'error message repository' of some kind so that GNOME's 
> error messages could be pulled from a commonly translated 
> list.  That has its own  limitations of course.

It would certainly be nice to translate "File %s does not
exist" once only instead of once per application which 
notices this.

Telsa