Re: gnumeric: Note to translators

[Karl Eichwalder <keichwa gmx net>]

Morten Welinder <terra diku dk> writes:

>    Date: Mon, 12 Feb 2001 14:23:47 +0100 (CET)
>    From: Dennis Bjorklund <db zigo dhs org>
>    cc: Morten Welinder <terra diku dk>, <gnumeric-list gnome org>,
>          <gnome-i18n gnome org>
>
>    On 12 Feb 2001, Karl Eichwalder wrote:
>
>    > > 1. The old word-by-word translation scheme.  The translations will
>    > >    never become good.  "Mean" could become "heisst", "Durchschnitt",
>    > >    "gemein", and probably a zillion other things -- you need context
>    > >    to decice.
>    >
>    > Put a comment at every occurence?  Yes, I know the will clutter the code
>    > with "crap".
>
>    I think is the better solution. Maybe also some new comment that can put
>    strings together in a group and put next to each other in the .po file.
>
> This, unfortunately, is *not* a solution.  Comments, however helpful, do
> not solve the fundamental problem that there are strings that need two
> different translations depending on context.  The current gettext just
> cannot handle this and the translator is left to flip a coin.  Thus
> our translations suck.

No, this isn't the truth.  Here's one solution:

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- cut here -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
From: Karl Eichwalder <ke gnu franken de>
Subject: Re: gettext
To: Zbigniew Chyla <cyba piast t19 ds pwr wroc pl>
Cc: gnome-i18n nuclecu unam mx, miguel gnu org
Date: 28 Sep 1999 07:02:12 +0200

Zbigniew Chyla <cyba piast t19 ds pwr wroc pl> writes:

|   Here's much better solution (real code ;):
|   
|   #define __(s) (strchr(_(s), ':') + 1)
|   (put this macro definition somewhere in gnome-libs)
|   ...
|   
|    puts(__("1:Name"));
|    ...
|    puts(__("2:Name"));
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- cut here -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

> Typically such strings are short sentence fragments from glade dialogs
> or the forms generated by the analysis tools.  In many cases we are left
> with single words.  For example, I wanted a search-and-replace dialog
> that looked like this:
>
>       +-----------------------------+
>       |                             |
>       | Replace  _________________  |
>       | by       _________________  |
>       |                             |
>       +-----------------------------+

Okay, that's a different story.  Please note, the same screen might not
even work for all languages!

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