2015-05-13, 18:00
Hi guys
Over the years while translating Kodi and other programs I encountered various problems
I will continue talking about Kodi specific problems
First, my native language is romanian
Problems:
1. Nouns gender
My language has a gender for nouns
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_gender
So a word has 2 versions depending on the context
In Kodi's setting this makes the translation unnatural (sound a little weird)
Right now I try to count how many times each version should be used
This is how I decide into which one I translate
So this is more than 50% right
2. Words order
My language has a reverse order of the words
So something like 'blue flower' in my language would be 'flower blue'
This is ok whe the entire phrase is on transifex, but not when words are built in interface, based on english grammar rules
One example is
SYSTEM -> Appearance -> Skin -Settings
left panel (General settings, Window options, etc)
3. Capitalization
In my language we don't capitalize words in the middle of the sentence like in english
There are some exceptions like names or abbreviations
This is ok whe the entire phrase is on transifex, but not when words are buit in interface, based on english grammar rules
Quick example:
SYSTEM ('Change your Settings)
Here 'Settings' alone is ok to have capital 'S', but inside the phrase is not
4. Plurals
My language has 3 plural forms
I see that in .po file is a rule for that
'Plural-Forms: nplurals=3; plural=(n==1?0:(((n%100>19)||((n%100==0)&&(n!=0)))?2:1));\n'
Never seen this to work!
I saw that we can specify plural form on Transifex
This is good
Another problem is that in my language something like '1 second' is not natural
I is more appropriate to translate it as 'a second'
On Transifex the ogiginal string would be something like '%d second'
If I translate withot the '%d' placeholder I will get a warning
I don't know if this a big problem or just a warnig to not make mistakes
So I would like to ask other translators to tell me how they solve this issues
Or, if someone else, translator or developer has any ideas how to solve this problems, please make a post
Since I saw that is possible to make plural rules I wonder if is also possible to make rules for gender and word order
Thank you
Over the years while translating Kodi and other programs I encountered various problems
I will continue talking about Kodi specific problems
First, my native language is romanian
Problems:
1. Nouns gender
My language has a gender for nouns
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_gender
So a word has 2 versions depending on the context
In Kodi's setting this makes the translation unnatural (sound a little weird)
Right now I try to count how many times each version should be used
This is how I decide into which one I translate
So this is more than 50% right
2. Words order
My language has a reverse order of the words
So something like 'blue flower' in my language would be 'flower blue'
This is ok whe the entire phrase is on transifex, but not when words are built in interface, based on english grammar rules
One example is
SYSTEM -> Appearance -> Skin -Settings
left panel (General settings, Window options, etc)
3. Capitalization
In my language we don't capitalize words in the middle of the sentence like in english
There are some exceptions like names or abbreviations
This is ok whe the entire phrase is on transifex, but not when words are buit in interface, based on english grammar rules
Quick example:
SYSTEM ('Change your Settings)
Here 'Settings' alone is ok to have capital 'S', but inside the phrase is not
4. Plurals
My language has 3 plural forms
I see that in .po file is a rule for that
'Plural-Forms: nplurals=3; plural=(n==1?0:(((n%100>19)||((n%100==0)&&(n!=0)))?2:1));\n'
Never seen this to work!
I saw that we can specify plural form on Transifex
This is good
Another problem is that in my language something like '1 second' is not natural
I is more appropriate to translate it as 'a second'
On Transifex the ogiginal string would be something like '%d second'
If I translate withot the '%d' placeholder I will get a warning
I don't know if this a big problem or just a warnig to not make mistakes
So I would like to ask other translators to tell me how they solve this issues
Or, if someone else, translator or developer has any ideas how to solve this problems, please make a post
Since I saw that is possible to make plural rules I wonder if is also possible to make rules for gender and word order
Thank you