GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 515119
untranslatable strings
Last modified: 2008-02-15 13:58:39 UTC
the following strings need translator comments, because "it"/%s is unclearly and can have several translations depending on the gender of the noun. http://live.gnome.org/TranslationProject/DevGuidelines/Use_comments #: ../pk/gkr-pk-object-storage.c:174 #, fuzzy, c-format msgid "An application wants access to the %s '%s', but it is locked" #: ../pk/gkr-pk-object-storage.c:177 #, fuzzy, c-format msgid "An application wants access to '%s', but it is locked" #: ../pk/gkr-pk-object-storage.c:182 #, fuzzy, c-format msgid "The system wants to import the %s '%s', but it is locked." #: ../pk/gkr-pk-object-storage.c:185 #, fuzzy, c-format msgid "The system wants to import '%s', but it is locked." #: ../pk/gkr-pk-object-storage.c:197 #, fuzzy, c-format msgid "Automatically unlock this %s when I log in."
from pk/gkr-pk-object-storage.c: /* * TRANSLATORS: * display_type will be the type of the object like 'certificate' or 'key' * details will the name of the object to unlock. */ that is totally useless. translator comments MUST immediately preceed a message, see http://live.gnome.org/TranslationProject/DevGuidelines/Use%20comments . display_type = gkr_pkix_parsed_type_to_display (type); title = g_strdup_printf (_("Unlock %s"), display_type); primary = g_strdup_printf (_("Enter password for the %s to unlock"), display_type); from /pkix/gkr-pkix-parser.c: const gchar* gkr_pkix_parsed_type_to_display (GQuark type) { if (type == GKR_PKIX_PRIVATE_KEY) return _("private key"); else if (type == GKR_PKIX_CERTIFICATE) return _("certificate"); else if (type == GKR_PKIX_PUBLIC_KEY) return _("public key"); this will never work in *any* other language. "unlock %s" requires %s to be accusative, but "private key" without any context looks like nominative. please NEVER SPLIT SENTENCES LIKE THIS: http://live.gnome.org/TranslationProject/DevGuidelines/Never%20split%20sentences string freeze is on monday.
Fixed the translator comments. In the second case currently we retrieve the user presentable description of the object, and include it in the sentence. Many more object types will be added in the future. If that is wrong then I have no idea what to do. Patches welcome.
in many languages "private key" has a different grammatical gender than certificate. the "the" in the sentence "Enter password for the %s to unlock" depends on this grammatical gender. e.g. in german "for THE private key" becomes "für DEN privaten Schlüssel" while "for THE certificate" becomes "für DAS Zertifikat". you may want to bring this up to the gnome-i18n@ mailing list and ask for ideas, but to me it looks like you will need a seperate string for each case, also for the many more object types to come.
I wonder what we would do if those type strings were to come from external non-code files, which was an option. Hrm, I worder what nautilus does when it needs to build messages with things like "JPEG Image" or "Folder" or "Plain text file".
Created attachment 104977 [details] [review] Patch proposition Here is a patch who could partially resolve the problem.
That patch makes various strings more difficult for the user. ie: What is an 'object'? I've committed a fix which should fix this, at the expense of code maintainability.
i'm sorry for the expense of code maintainability, but i prefer having GNOME software that can be translated to other languages than english-only... :-/
Certainly. My point was that I would prefer to have code maintainability take a hit, rather than the user (by providing generic strings).