Re: Problem translating Damned lies: using apostrophes

[Gabor Kelemen <kelemeng gnome hu>]

S�ia Miranda �a:
> Hi,
>
> We're revising the damned lies Catalan translation. We've detected an
> annoying error in the page, which is caused by our (...my) unability to
> translate the string properly.
>
> In the same way that -in English- we say "a fruit" (because the word
> following the article starts with a consonant) but "an
> elephant" (because "elephant" starts with a vowel), in Catalan we use
> apostrophes before words that start with a vowel.  That is, we say "el
> catal�(consonant), and "l'angl� (vowel).
Hungarian has similar problems, only with a/az as articles.

There are two common solutions for this: one is to use the hibryd
"a(z)", which is ugly, but it's used widely and users understand it.

The other way is to circuminvent the use of variable's articles by using
the word "following". In this case, I'd say "Page of the following:
%(team)s". This results in somewhat longer strings, but eliminates the
problem.

The third and somewhat uncommon solution is just to put the variable in
(), and specifying the given thing rather generally, thus loweing it's
importance a bit, in this case something like "Team's (%(team)s) page:"

I don't know anything about Catalan, so it's possible that these
workarounds are not applicable at all, but hope you get some clue :).

Regards
Gabor Kelemen