Re: New desktop features provided by new version of update-notifier

["Eddy Petrişor" <eddy.petrisor@gmail.com>]

On 13/08/06, Gustavo Noronha Silva <kov@debian.org> wrote:
> Em Sun, 13 Aug 2006 14:51:39 +0300
> "Eddy Petrişor" <eddy.petrisor@gmail.com> escreveu:
>
> > On 13/08/06, Gustavo Noronha Silva <kov@debian.org> wrote:
> > > a Ubuntu CD; I patched the program to also look for Debian CDs, and
> > > to avoid messing with translations, the messages have Ubuntu
> > > replaced by Debian in runtime, after the translation is got from
> > > gettext if the CD that was inserted is a Debian CD.
> >
> > Please DON'T do that! In some languages, like Serbian or Romanian,
> > substntives do decline, have genders and may change form according to
> > context. Thus I suggest doing the right thing and replace strings only
> > in the original string properly and allow translators to decide what's
> > best for their language.
>
> Oh, ok, I thought that could come up. I'll provide one more string,
> then, or perhaps replace the distribution name with a %s, and add
> Ubuntu and Debian as independent translatable strings, does that sound
> good?

I think this could be still risky since in Serbian, depending on the
context, "Debian" might become "Debiana" and near words would change
accordingly. Romanian is a little bit more permissive :-) and it would
work with your %s  solution, but I can't guarantee there are not other
languages which are as needy as Serbian.

Of course, for optimisation reasons there could be only a distinct
phrase, but the context should not be missing.

--
Regards,
EddyP
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"Imagination is more important than knowledge" A.Einstein