GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 650579
cousin
Last modified: 2011-09-09 20:10:16 UTC
Question "John's father's sister's sister-in-law is also?" expects female in answer. Question "John's mother's brother's brother-in-law is also?" expects male in answer. One answer option is "cousin". It's the same word for male and female, but different words in other languages (e.g. "bratranec" and "sestřenice" in Czech). Is any possibility to split it two words for translation, e.g. by set context. If I use only one gender or both together, it markedly exclude this answer and solution is easier. It isn't fatal problem, but it would be better.
Hello, The question is about the relation with John, then in all cases is male. I have added the possession (his) missing in some cases to make it more clear: ;--------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q: John's father's sister's sister-in-law is also? Do not assume that John has any relative that has not been mentioned. [option_answers]</_question> A) His mother B) Has no relation" x = "0.05" y = "0.02" size = "large"/> C) His cousin D) His son-in-law R: The sister's sister-in-law is John's father's wife, that is, John's mother. A) His father B) Has no relation" x = "0.05" y = "0.02" size = "large"/> C) His cousin D) His son-in-law" x = "0.05" y = "0.02" size = "large"/> ;--------------------------------------------------------------------------- Does it make sense? Thanks for the bug report Jordi,
Hi Marek, Can you confirm is does it make sense for you? Thanks, Jordi,
Fix committed
I'd like us to reopen this issue, since it is still not meaningfully translatable. In Afrikaans (and I'm sure in other languages), there are two translations for cousin: one for a male cousin, and one for a female cousin. With specific references in the questions to "sister-in-law" and "brother-in-law" the one or the other one is obviously wrong and out of place. This is an issue regardless of whether we start the sentence with John or Susan. Think of the English word "cousin" as similar to "parent", and what we have as similar to "father" and "mother", with no genderless/generic term like "parent". Since the question in each case clearly implies either a male or a female, it would be unfortunate to make one of the options not even of the right gender. I hope I'm making sense :-)
Thanks for reporting this I understand everything that you mean except for: "With specific references in the questions to "sister-in-law" and "brother-in-law" the one or the other one is obviously wrong and out of place. This is an issue regardless of whether we start the sentence with John or Susan." The question says: John's father's sister's sister-in-law is also? Do not assume that John has any relative that has not been mentioned. Choose one of the following: A) His cousin The question is relative to John, not to John's father's sister's sister-in-law. This is at least how I see it. Thoughts? Jordi,
"John's father's sister's sister-in-law is also?" has answer related to "sister-in-law". So the answer must logically be a person with the female sex. If one option has male sex, a user can disable it without examining the family relationships. Analogy second question: brother-in-low -> male.
Thanks a lot for your patient. The fixes introduced in this final version include also the fix for issue 655820. John's father's sister's sister-in-law is also? Do not assume that John has any relative that has not been mentioned. A) Her mother (correct) B) Her aunt C) Her cousin D) Her son-in-law Rationale: The sister's sister-in-law is John's father's wife, that is, John's mother. John's mother's brother's brother-in-law is also? Do not assume that John has any relative that has not been mentioned. A) His father (correct) B) His uncle C) His cousin D) His son-in-law Rationale: The brother's brother-in-law is John's mother's husband, that is, John's father I will appreciate if you can confirm that this will work for you. Thanks, Jordi,
I'm afraid these make no sense to me. The only solution I see is that there are two identical strings with different contexts as Marek suggested in the original report: "His cousin" with msgctxt "female cousin" (answer to the first question) and "His cousin" with msgctxt "male cousin" (answer to the second question) This way the English is always "His cousin", but this will be translatable to either a female cousin or a male cousin as required by the question to be challenging. More information here: https://live.gnome.org/TranslationProject/DevGuidelines/Translation%20contexts This doesn't solve the issue with bug 655820, but would make this translatable.
According to the first comment: Question "John's father's sister's sister-in-law is also?" expects female in answer. Question "John's mother's brother's brother-in-law is also?" expects male in answer. My understanding is that by providing "Her cousin" in the first sentence and "His cousin" on the second one as possible answers will fix the problem since you have two separate strings for each case. There is no longer "His cousin" shared between both questions. Does this still does not work? Thanks, Jordi,
No, it doesn't work, because "cousin" is still ambiguous, and has to be translated in two different ways depending on whether a male cousin is intended or a female cousin is intended. I have no idea to whom the "Her" in "Her cousin" refers to. The question is about some relation to John, isn't it? So it has to be "His ...". Afrikaans has these two words: "nefie" - the son of my aunt/uncle - a male cousin "niggie" - the daughter of my aunt/uncle - a female cousin It is to one of these that you refer to in each of these questions. Do you see that if I say "someone's sister-in-law is the son of my aunt/uncle" the question would be obviously wrong? Nobody's son can be anybody's sister-in-law, so the answer is obviously out of place. English simply doesn't have a way to distinguish between a cousin that is a male person and a cousin that is a female person. Is there any problem by using the approach that I describe in comment 9?
Hi, I think that I should remove his/her. I will check with a native speaker at work. I have been looking into using contexts with xml files but I have found no example no documentation. In case that this is not possible, what is the problem using the following approach: msgid "Cousin" msgstr "nefie / niggie" Would this work? Thanks, Jordi,
See tests/cases/context.xml in intltool source for context example. I test it, but I afraid it works for paired tags only. game.xml use unpaired <string>. You should fixed GameXmlFactory.cs to work with <_string></_string> too.
If you remove "him", then all the answers become correct, because someone's sister-in-law is maybe someone's cousin as well and maybe someone's aunt as well. I guess the whole point is to clearly frame the answers as relations to John. I could translate it with "nefie / niggie" if it has to, but it would be unfortunate - it will look artificially "translated" and unnatural. If we can have a solution with msgctxt, that would be great. Thanks for the perseverance!
Following your indication here is how the XML will look like: ;----------------------------------------- <_question>John's father's sister's sister-in-law is also? Do not assume that John has any relative that has not been mentioned. [option_answers]</_question> <string _text = "Choose one of the following:" x = "0.1" y = "0.15" size = "large"/> <string _text = "[option_prefix] His mother" x = "0.05" y = "0.02" size = "large"/> <string _text = "[option_prefix] His aunt" x = "0.05" y = "0.02" size = "large"/> <_string msgctxt="John's father's sister's sister-in-law is also?" x = "0.05" y = "0.02" size = "large">[option_prefix] His cousin</_string> <string _text = "[option_prefix] His son-in-law" x = "0.05" y = "0.02" size = "large"/> <_rationale>The sister's sister-in-law is John's father's wife, that is, John's mother.</_rationale> ;----------------------------------------- John's mother's brother's brother-in-law is also? Do not assume that John has any relative that has not been mentioned. [option_answers]</_question> <string _text = "Choose one of the following:" x = "0.1" y = "0.15" size = "large"/> <string _text = "[option_prefix] His father" x = "0.05" y = "0.02" size = "large"/> <string _text = "[option_prefix] His uncle" x = "0.05" y = "0.02" size = <option x = "0.25" y = "0.5" width ="0.6" height ="0.1" order ="randomized"> <_string msgctxt="John's mother's brother's brother-in-law is also?" x = "0.05" y = "0.02" size = "large">[option_prefix] His cousin</_string> <string _text = "[option_prefix] His son-in-law" x = "0.05" y = "0.02" size = <_rationale>The brother's brother-in-law is John's mother's husband, that is, John's father.</_rationale> and this how the options will be exported to the PO file: #: ../data/games.xml.h:46 msgctxt "John's father's sister's sister-in-law is also?" msgid "[option_prefix] His cousin" msgstr "" #: ../data/games.xml.h:48 msgctxt "John's mother's brother's brother-in-law is also?" msgid "[option_prefix] His cousin" msgstr "" Will this work? Thanks again! Jordi,
Yes, it looks right. Thanks for your patience with translators into strange languages :-)
Thanks for your patient This has been fixed in HEAD[1]. I will appreciate if you can test that the fix works for your language. Thanks, Jordi, [1] http://git.gnome.org/browse/gbrainy
I don't know what [option_prefix] is or why it is suddently there, but the rest looks usable. Thanks.
To F Wolff: [option_prefix] is placeholder. It's replaced by A), B) etc. on runtime. To Jordi Mas: Current version is OK.