Article is from 1998 and very much out of date. Read: http://blogs.perl.org/users/aristotle/2011/04/stop-using-mak...
It is funny to have such a good article with so many comments at the end that disagree. The issue does not seem to be so clear cut.
A Localization Horror Story: It Could Happen to You
11–20 of 257 posts
Re: A Localization Horror Story: It Could Happen to You
#12Article is from 1998 and very much out of date. Read: http://blogs.perl.org/users/aristotle/2011/04/stop-using-mak...
Should be reflected in the title, if possible, neh?
Re: A Localization Horror Story: It Could Happen to You
#13Slightly OT, mi favourite localization error was in Ubuntu when they had that nice netbook interface (that later would become Unity). The network icon label was "Rojo" in the Spanish localization, that is the word for "red" color. What? Well, if you translate "Net" to Spanish you get "Red"; and if you translate that again (by mistake), you get "Rojo". There you are :)
OT means Out of Topic? In french we say HS (for Hors Sujet).
Re: A Localization Horror Story: It Could Happen to You
#14Slightly OT, mi favourite localization error was in Ubuntu when they had that nice netbook interface (that later would become Unity). The network icon label was "Rojo" in the Spanish localization, that is the word for "red" color. What? Well, if you translate "Net" to Spanish you get "Red"; and if you translate that again (by mistake), you get "Rojo". There you are :)
That's an error only an amateur translator would make. Guess who makes free software translations...
A professional translator makes sure to check the context of the translation, it doesn't go blindly translating sentences and words without context.
Re: A Localization Horror Story: It Could Happen to You
#15Qt takes care of that in a really nice way.
You write tr("I scanned %1 directory.", "", count) and it takes cares of applying the correct translation with the right plurals depending on the number.
Re: A Localization Horror Story: It Could Happen to You
#16Slightly OT, mi favourite localization error was in Ubuntu when they had that nice netbook interface (that later would become Unity). The network icon label was "Rojo" in the Spanish localization, that is the word for "red" color. What? Well, if you translate "Net" to Spanish you get "Red"; and if you translate that again (by mistake), you get "Rojo". There you are :)
OT means Out of Topic? In french we say HS (for Hors Sujet).
It means 'off topic'.
Re: A Localization Horror Story: It Could Happen to You
#17Funny how Slovene seems to tick all the complications checkboxes :D We have 4 grammatical numbers (singular, dual, plural for 3 and 4, plural for 5 and above), they repeat at mod 100 (so 101 is singular, 102 dual,…), it's an inflectional language with 3 grammatical genders, sentence should take a different form depending on whether the user is male or female,…
I was just trying to think of how it would work out in Polish....
directory is "katalog" in Polish, and it would be:
1 katalog
2 katalogi
3 katalogi
4 katalogi
5 katalogów
6 katalogów
....(it doesn't change for any number greater than 5)
But if you wanted to say "X files were found in Y directories" then you would have to say:
....1 katalogu
....2 katalogach
....3 katalogach
....1000 katalogów
(for 1001 even I am not sure if you should say katalogów or katalogach, both sound correct to me)
...and again, the whole thing changes depending on the speaker being male/female + singular/plural("I have found"/"we have found").
Compared to the grammar of Slavic languages, English is super easy.
Re: A Localization Horror Story: It Could Happen to You
#18Just in case people are wondering about the horror story: use ngettext which is a function in the gettext library.
Indeed, this is a solved problem. Use ngettext, see its page for all different language variations (even the Slovenian four different forms) https://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/manual/html_node/Plural...
Re: A Localization Horror Story: It Could Happen to You
#19Slightly OT, mi favourite localization error was in Ubuntu when they had that nice netbook interface (that later would become Unity). The network icon label was "Rojo" in the Spanish localization, that is the word for "red" color. What? Well, if you translate "Net" to Spanish you get "Red"; and if you translate that again (by mistake), you get "Rojo". There you are :)
OT means Out of Topic? In french we say HS (for Hors Sujet).
[deleted]
Re: A Localization Horror Story: It Could Happen to You
#20Funny how Slovene seems to tick all the complications checkboxes :D We have 4 grammatical numbers (singular, dual, plural for 3 and 4, plural for 5 and above), they repeat at mod 100 (so 101 is singular, 102 dual,…), it's an inflectional language with 3 grammatical genders, sentence should take a different form depending on whether the user is male or female,…
I was just trying to think of how it would work out in Polish.... directory is "katalog" in Polish, and it would be: 1 katalog 2 katalogi 3 katalogi 4 katalogi 5 katalogów 6 katalogów ....(it doesn't change for any number greater than 5) But if you wanted to say "X files were found in Y directories" then you would have to say: ....1 katalogu ....2 katalogach ....3 katalogach ....1000 katalogów (for 1001 even I am not…
1 imenik
2 imenika
3 imeniki
4 imeniki
5 imenikov
6 imenikov
…
101 imenik
102 imenika
103 imeniki
…
201 imenik
…
1001 imenik
…
Slavic languages are f*d up :D