Re: Plural forms in translations

[Runa Bhattacharjee <runabh gmail com>]

Claude Paroz wrote:
> Le vendredi 07 mars 2008 à 15:15 +0530, Runa Bhattacharjee a écrit :
>   
> > Hi Claude,
> >
> > Claude Paroz wrote:
> >     
> > > Hi all,
> > >
> > > I noticed today that several translations (especially Marathi, Bengali,
> > > Hindi, Indonesian and others) have problems because of the plural form. 
> > > See e.g. http://l10n.gnome.org/languages/mr/gnome-2-22
> > >
> > > Please, do not commit translations into GNOME SVN without checking first
> > > that they pass 'msgfmt' check command:
> > >
> > > msgfmt -vvc -o /dev/null mr.po
> > >
> > > When there is a plural string, like this:
> > >
> > > msgid "There is a tab with errors"
> > > msgid_plural "There are %d tabs with errors"
> > >
> > > You have to add the %d format string in your translation (if it is
> > > present in the original string). At runtime, %d will be replaced by a
> > > real number.
> > >
> > > Please, correct the files as soon as possible.
> > >
> > >
> > >   
> > >       
> > Thanks for bringing this up. I have been updating the bn_IN.po files the 
> > past week after passing it with msgfmt, but none of the files show an 
> > errors:
> >
> > [runab runab file-roller]$ msgfmt -cv -o /dev/null bn_IN.po 
> > 259 translated messages.
> >     
>
> Weird.
> $ msgfmt -vvc -o /dev/null bn_IN.po 
> bn_IN.po:124: number of format specifications in 'msgid' and 'msgstr[1]'
> does not match
> msgfmt: found 1 fatal error
> 259 translated messages.
>
> $ msgfmt --version
> msgfmt (GNU gettext-tools) 0.16.1
>
> In the particular case of file-roller bn_IN.po, the problem is that
> msgstr[1] (translated plural form) is empty at line 125.
>
>
>   
Yup, got it now. The msgfmt version I was using is this:
$ msgfmt --version
msgfmt (GNU gettext-tools) 0.14.6

The above error is thrown on my local file with the 0.16.1 version.

In any case, for languages which do not have a plural form, the problem 
might still persist in case the editor settings are set to "not require 
the plural forms". I get the following screen with only one placeholder 
for the msgstr string. [1]

regards
Runa

[1] http://runa.randomink.org/misc/file-roller-bn_IN%20-%20KBabel.png



--
blog: http://runab.livejournal.com
irc: mishti or runa_b on Freenode