Re: Formatting lists of things

[F Wolff <friedel translate org za>]

Op Vrydag 22-06-2007 om 10:23 uur [tijdzone -0500], schreef Shaun
McCance:
> I've run into a localization issue in formatting DocBook,
> and I need some input from translators to decide how best
> to solve it.  Let's say I have a list of people's names.
> There could be any number of people.  I need to format
> this as inline text.  So in English, I'd do:
> 
>   Tom and Dick
>   Tom, Dick, and Harry
>   Tom, Dick, Harry, and Sally
> 
> The names, of course, don't get translated, but the
> commas and "and" should be.  So again, this time with
> parentheses around the potentially translatable parts:
> 
>   Tom( and ) Dick
>   Tom(, )Dick(, and )Harry
>   Tom(, )Dick(, )Harry(, and )Sally
> 
> If every language works exactly like English, then I
> can just mark three strings for translation: ", ",
> " and ", and ", and ".  But my guess is that they
> aren't all like English.
> 
> So translators, please let me know hows lists of
> things are formatted in your language, including
> instructions on exceptions (i.e. in English, two
> elements are formatted differently than three or
> more, as above).
> 
> --
> Shaun
> 

Hi Shaun

The thread is a bit old, but I recently started thinking a bit beyond my
mother tongue. I am not a mother tongue speaker of Zulu, but know enough
to foresee some problems with what you mention. (*sorry* :-)

I can't say whether there is an official rule about the comma, and I
have a suspicion that the equivalent for "and" might be used throughout
(which compounds the problem I'm about to mention). The issue is with
the "and". There is no separate word for "and" in Zulu. The prefix "na-"
is joined with the following word, which causes some phonological
changes, depending on the noun class of the last "thing". (Noun classes
are a bit like genders in some European languages, except Bantu
languages often have in the region of 17 of them.)

... and John    -> na + uJohn  -> noJohn
... and water   -> na + amanzi -> namanzi
... and a thing -> na + into   -> nento

I don't think a programmatic solution will be realistic for this
problem. The change that is necessary is perfectly predictable if you
have the information (no AI or semantic interpretation necessary), but
who will program the rules for each languages where this kind of thing
is necessary? Ideally it is the kind of thing that should probably be
provided by the locale instead of being programmed in each piece of
software.

The sad thing is that this seems to work very well for most languages,
and will probably be used. If I were the Zulu translator for this, I
would simply use a comma for the last "and", but I'm not sure how wrong
this will "feel" for a Zulu speaker (especially if it is more natural to
just use the "and / na-" between each pair.

I guess part of asking a question is being prepared for the
answer... ;-)

Keep well
Friedel