Hi translators,
Is anyone translating the timer labels in GNOME Games? I'm asking about
the labels on the clocks in Chess, Tetravex, Mines, Hitori, and
Mahjongg. These horrible things:
/* Translators: sorry. This is the clock label when the game
has exceeded
* one hour in length. The first %02d is hours, the middle %
02d is minutes,
* and the last is seconds. In between are ratio characters
and LTR order
* marks, so that nothing gets reversed in RTL languages.
You probably do not
* need to change this. Probably.
*/
clock_label.set_text (_("%02d\xE2\x88\xB6\xE2\x80\x8E%02d
\xE2\x88\xB6\xE2\x80\x8E%02d").printf (hours, minutes, seconds));
I've spelled out each hex character explicitly in the source code, but I
didn't realize that doesn't happen in the po files. You just see this:
msgid "%02d∶%02d∶%02d"
If the string of hex was not really conducive to translation accuracy,
the invisible LTR mark seems like a landmine to anyone not copying the
string unchanged. And worse, vim chokes on the LTR mark and displays the
string like this instead:
msgid "%02d∶<200e>%02d∶<200e>%02d"
That bogus string wound up in at least the French translation for
several games (through no fault of the translator), breaking the timer
label.
The upshot is that your translation might be broken too. I figure the
easiest way around this is to just not mark the string for translation,
so that's what I'd like to do. If anyone needs these to remain
translatable, please speak up!
Thanks,
Michael
P.S. The purpose of the LTR mark is to prevent the ratio character from
causing the numbers to flip around in RTL locales. It has no effect in
LTR locales.
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