Re: [Fwd: Re: Translation problems]

[Danilo Segan <dsegan gmx net>]

I believe "context markers" are the right way to go. OTOH, there are  
many problems with gender, and not all of them are solveable (eg. if it  
is required of a user to enter his/her name, string in the form of "%s,  
please enter your date of birth" is impossible to do right).

The same problem plagues other languages which use gender, but I found  
it that "New" is mostly reused only for the "File" menu, where it takes  
only the gender of "File". That's because both "File" and "New" are in  
libgnomeui, libgnome, gtk+, and similar modules (basically, a Gnome  
development platform).

Other programs which have eg. "Project > New", usually provide their  
own "New" string, so it's in different gettext domains. Basically,  
instead of using context markers, same strings are split into different  
gettext domains. This might even be a good suggestion for big projects  
which reuse the same string for many different stuff (and some, like  
Gimp, already do it that way).

Because of this _limited_ reuse in Gnome project, I never really came  
across troublesome strings. I may have payed not-close-enough  
attention, but I'd certainly notice if it was a large-scale problem  
(like that of ngettext :-).


Cheers,
Danilo