Managing word agreements in PO translations?

[Frédéric Delanoy]

Hi,

In various languages, there are multiple forms/agreements for a
pronoun/adjective. In French, for instance masculine and feminine
forms exist; in other languages (like German IIRC) there's even a
neutral form (other languages may also be more complicated)

while agreements in English are limited, e.g. there's only one form
for masculine/feminine/plural adjectives.

This makes translating short English words problematic.

In my case,  I've a problem with the following PO entry

#: comctl32.rc:44 crypt32.rc:198 progman.rc:78 winecfg.rc:76
msgid "None"

According to context, it can be translated (in French) as either
"Aucun" or "Aucune" (agreements on the same word).
Admitedly, it could be translated with "Aucun(e)" but that seems more
like a workaround and feels a bit weird (user shouldn't see partially
incorrect/odd translations because of technical issues)

OTOH, creating a distinct msgcontext for every agreement in every
supported language may be overkill, although the number of affected
msgids is limited.

What's your opinion on how to handle that, folks?

Frédéric Delanoy

NB: This obviously posed no problem before the rc->po migration, since
it was duplicated in different rc files

[Alexandre Julliard]

Frédéric Delanoy <frederic.delanoy(a)gmail.com> writes:
> OTOH, creating a distinct msgcontext for every agreement in every
> supported language may be overkill, although the number of affected
> msgids is limited.
>
> What's your opinion on how to handle that, folks?

Feel free to add contexts where necessary.

-- 
Alexandre Julliard
julliard(a)winehq.org

[Frédéric Delanoy]

2011/4/22 Alexandre Julliard <julliard(a)winehq.org>:
> Frédéric Delanoy <frederic.delanoy(a)gmail.com> writes:
> > OTOH, creating a distinct msgcontext for every agreement in every
> > supported language may be overkill, although the number of affected
> > msgids is limited.
> >
> > What's your opinion on how to handle that, folks?
>
> Feel free to add contexts where necessary.

It's just that it feels weird to add a context for a specific form of
a specific language
Ex: HKY_NONE "None"  in comctl32.rc:44

converted to HKY_NONE "#msgctxt#feminine agreement#None"

since this agreement doesn't exist in English

Is it the way it should be done? Or am I completely wrong?

I  mean, the "hotkey" translation has feminine form in French, but
could have any other form in another language.

Frédéric Delanoy

[Alexandre Julliard]

Frédéric Delanoy <frederic.delanoy(a)gmail.com> writes:
> It's just that it feels weird to add a context for a specific form of
> a specific language
> Ex: HKY_NONE "None"  in comctl32.rc:44
>
> converted to HKY_NONE "#msgctxt#feminine agreement#None"
>
> since this agreement doesn't exist in English
>
> Is it the way it should be done? Or am I completely wrong?
>
> I  mean, the "hotkey" translation has feminine form in French, but
> could have any other form in another language.

That's why a context like "feminine" doesn't make sense, that's
language-specific. The context should be something like "hotkey".

-- 
Alexandre Julliard
julliard(a)winehq.org