Re: Why adding context causes translations to become fuzzy (was: Two bugs for translatable strings)

[Claude Paroz <claude 2xlibre net>]

Le lundi 23 février 2009 à 22:16 +0100, Wouter Bolsterlee a écrit :
> 2009-02-23 klockan 22:12 skrev Reinout van Schouwen:
> > Op donderdag 19-02-2009 om 09:39 uur [tijdzone +0200], schreef F Wolff:
> > > If a msgctxt is added, existing translations will go fuzzy with
> > > msgmerge, even if the msgid remained unchanged. So I guess this should
> > > be handled as a string freeze break since existing translations will not
> > > be used anymore.
> > Can anyone explain to me why it makes sense to mark a translated string
> > fuzzy when just context has been added? I'd like to think that this
> > behaviour is a bug.
> 
> This is most certainly not a bug. If context changes/additions were ignored,
> that could cause many problems to go unnoticed.
> 
> Let's assume an application already had the string "Unknown", then
> "something|Unknown" (yes, I'm using old syntax here for clarity) was added.
> Now, if "something|Unknown" was automatically marked as translated by
> reusing the string originally intended for "Unknown" (without context!), and
> was not marked fuzzy, the result could be incorrect.
> 
> Real-life example: "Unknown" in gnome-panel could be either "inconnu" or
> "inconnue" in French. The translator originally looked at the source code to
> make the correct choice. For the new string this choice cannot be made
> automatically, so a fuzzy marker is required here to catch the translator's
> attention.

Oh, sorry, I didn't read your extensive answer before sending mine :-P

Claude