Thread: Translation issue: use of "%s"

Dear friends,

Just a small remark about translation. The string "Create a new %s" cannot be
translated into several languages.

1) In French, "new"  will be translated "nouveau", "nouvelle" or "nouvel".
Writing "nouveau/nouvel/nouvelle" is tedious. Nearly all European languages,
except English are impacted.

2) In some other languages, strings can be aggregated in a single word (like
in Hungarian and German). Making the translation ***clearly*** impossible.

Therefore, "%s" should rarely be used, except for the integration of
invariable strings.

3) Examples
-> working strings:
"Connected to database: %s"
"Username: %s"
"User \"%s\" was disconnected"

-> non-working strings:
"Click on the %s button"
"The thread was aborted because %s"
etc...

Just my 0.02 cents.
Cheers, Jean-Michel

Jean-Michel POURE wrote:

>Just a small remark about translation. The string "Create a new %s" cannot be
>translated into several languages.
>
>1) In French, "new"  will be translated "nouveau", "nouvelle" or "nouvel".
>Writing "nouveau/nouvel/nouvelle" is tedious. Nearly all European languages,
>except English are impacted.
>
>2) In some other languages, strings can be aggregated in a single word (like
>in Hungarian and German). Making the translation ***clearly*** impossible.
>
>Therefore, "%s" should rarely be used, except for the integration of
>invariable strings.
>
>3) Examples
>-> working strings:
>"Connected to database: %s"
>"Username: %s"
>"User \"%s\" was disconnected"
>
>-> non-working strings:
>"Click on the %s button"
>"The thread was aborted because %s"
>etc...
>
>
>
We'll have to sort out these problems one by one.
1) In the case of "Creating a new %s", I think it would help if %s is
not only the object name itself ("View", "Table", ...) but includes new
("new view", "new table",  "tableau nouveau", "neue Tabelle", "neuer
Operator"...). I'll be recoding typeNameList[] the next days for this.
Are there any other cases you found in pgadmin.pot?
2) do you have an example in pgAdmin3 for that?


The file notes/prepare_for_translation.txt should be extended to include
grammar hints, would you do that?

Regards,
Andreas

Dear Andreas,

> 1) In the case of "Creating a new %s", I think it would help if %s is
> not only the object name itself ("View", "Table", ...) but includes new
> ("new view", "new table",  "tableau nouveau", "neue Tabelle", "neuer
> Operator"...). I'll be recoding typeNameList[] the next days for this.
> Are there any other cases you found in pgadmin.pot?

It won't make it in several languages. Non european languages follow strange
rules that are hard to even imagine (sometimes no verb, sometimes no
adjective, sometimes only aggregates, etc...).

You should simply create different strings: "Create a new view", "Create a new
table", etc...

> 2) do you have an example in pgAdmin3 for that?
No, it was just a 0.02 cents remark.

To summarise, when possible, sentences should never be built by a
search/replace mechanism like "%s". If you use "%s", be sure the replaced
string is completely invariable (the name of a user, etc...).

Cheers,
Jean-Michel

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Andreas Pflug [mailto:Andreas.Pflug@web.de]
> Sent: 13 June 2003 14:39
> To: jm.poure@freesurf.fr
> Cc: pgadmin-hackers@postgresql.org
> Subject: Re: [pgadmin-hackers] Translation issue: use of "%s"
>
>
> The file notes/prepare_for_translation.txt should be extended
> to include
> grammar hints, would you do that?

that's gone now - use docs/en_US/prepare_for_translation.html instead.

Regards, Dave.