Re: [Translation-i18n] gettext with non-en source language

[Bruno Haible <bruno@clisp.org>]

Christian Rose wrote:
> gettext's English-centredness (which to large parts is historical, but
> in some cases still exists, like in the handling of plural forms) is
> both a blessing for our community where English is the UI default, as
> much as it is a nuisance in other real-life software development where
> the local language is the one that is targeted primarily, and is the
> one that you would want in the msgids and base your other future
> translations on.

What you call "gettext's English-centredness" is only a recommendation
in the doc. You _can_ use another language as the language of the source
files and the msgids in the PO files. Did you try it? Did you encounter
problems?

Sure there are people who start a web server software in Czech and then
want to localize it to German. They can do so. But I will not recommend
in the gettext doc to do like this. English and American are the world's
most understood languages nowadays and for the next decades, not Czech,
German, Spanish or whatever. It is short-sighted to start a fresh project
with user interface strings in any other language than English.

Bruno