GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 350415
Strings are not suitable for translation
Last modified: 2006-10-25 16:09:49 UTC
gnome-power-manager uses strings which are not translatable, because they are notprovided as whole sentences. Different languages use different word order, so it is not possible to keep the english word order in all languages and concatenate sentences from single words. Moreover, it is hard to translate single words outside context of the sentence. Example: Laptop battery + %i minutes + until charged is then translated as: "Baterie laptopu %i minut dokud nedobito" which is wrong Czech. For proper Czech ("Do dobytí baterií laptopu zbývá %i minut") i need a different word order: until charged + laptop battery + %i minutes So proper solution should be placing that all in one sentence. Parts like "laptop battery" can be variables (but provide special strings for these variables, dont reuse same strings from other places - other languages may need to use different grammatical forms in a particular sentence. see http://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/manual/html_chapter/gettext_3.html#SEC15
Valid point. We are now in string freeze so I don't think I can change the strings - or am I mistaken?
Created attachment 70517 [details] [review] patch to break string freeze What about this?
The patch will solve re-ordering problems, but not really make it possible for all languages to have completely correct translations. Eg. "%s" parts ("Laptop battery", "UPS", "Wireless mouse", "Wireless keyboard", "PDA", "Unknown") would have to be included in all sentences (so YES, you would multiply the number of messages by 6!) since other words might change form in different languages (think gender, declensions, plurality, etc.).
Danilo, can you give some more details please? Do you mean case each sentance with the device type? That would make a 2x7 deep if-statement...
Richard: mostly yes. But you already have that if-statement in device name selection. Indeed, to make translation completely correct in some languages, some other language translations become a bit more complicated (but they are still correct). The thing is that eg. in Serbian, "wireless mouse" and "(laptop) battery" are of different gender, so "is fully charged" would be translated to either "je napunjen" or "je napunjena" (Latin for your benefit, note the added "a" to the feminine form; also "unknown" would be third gender in Serbian). Anyway, if translators haven't complained about this earlier, I think we can wait for after the string freeze to do these changes (eg. for 2.18). Unless you think it's really worth it, I might consider approving it (also note that Christian Rose can also approve string-freeze breakages ;).
(Btw, I also want to thank you for all the effort you put into making our i18n the best possible where you can!)
Danilo, thanks. I can wait until 2.17 opens to break strings, and then I'll go on a rampage of adding hundreds of localisable strings. :-) Jakub, are there any other difficult to translate strings?
I've made loads more strings translatable. Are there any specific ones you want me to change? Thanks.
Closing as FIXED as the original problem is sorted.