ngettext use for recursive plurals
Göran Uddeborg
goeran at uddeborg.se
Thu Aug 28 17:04:10 UTC 2008
Milo? Komar?evi? writes:
> Kudos to developers for using ngettext, but there is a slightly
> complicated example in anaconda:
>
> msgid_plural "%d of %d optional packages selected"
>
> For Serbian (and other Slavic languages I presume), the resulting
> localized version will depend on both numbers, not just the first.
Judging from the originals,
msgid "%d of %d optional package selected"
msgid_plural "%d of %d optional packages selected"
I would assume it is the second, not the first number which influences
the choice.
There is a problem here, and it is not restricted to Slavic languages.
It is a problem for Swedish (a Germanic language) too. "Selected"
should be translated in different ways depending on the first number.
> I would like to file a BZ request for this to be broken up in two
> parts and used recursively, as in:
>
> msgid_plural "%d optional packages"
>
> #. TRANSLATORS: %s is substituted by the string above
> msgid_plural "%d of %s selected"
>
> Before I do so, just wanted to check this fits ok with other
> languages? Can't see a problem so far...
It's dangerous to compose sentences like that. More often than not,
it breaks for some languages. I don't personally know a language it
would break in, and it would solve the problem in Swedish too. But
I'm still a bit afraid of it.
Unfortunately, the po format isn't made to cope with sentences with
more than one singular/plural distinction. So I don't have any better
suggestion than yours. I just wanted to warn about it.
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