Re: Translating "yes" and "no" as answers to specific questions

[Claude Paroz <claude 2xlibre net>]

Le lundi 07 avril 2008 à 11:50 -0400, Thomas Thurman a écrit :
> Ysgrifennodd F Wolff:
> > I would really want to encourage you to keep things as simple as
> > possible. If you want a different translation for "yes" depending on
> > context, this is what msgctxt is meant for. Use msgctxt to specify the
> > unique context ("have"?), and provide a comment to explain to
> > translators what the issue is.
> 
> I think you are missing my point.  I am not approaching this problem as 
> a programmer; rather, I am considering it from the point of view of a 
> translator.  There are languages in which every yes/no question might 
> reasonably have a different verbal representation of assent or dissent.  
> I can't go through every gtk application in the world and ask their 
> programmers to add representations of the verb into msgctxt.  Even if I 
> could, there still wouldn't be any way for the translators to specify 
> what the translation of "yes" and "no" should be for that particular 
> question.
> 
> The reason I gave the examples I did was that to all application 
> programmers, and to most translators, they won't look any different from 
> what we have now.

I suspect this will be difficult to solve if only two languages are
concerned. This problem could in theory affect other stock items too,
and we have currently no mechanism to link a question with the
corresponding stock buttons.

Couldn't you find a way to rephrase the question in the translation so
as the answer is always the generic yes and no?

Claude