Re: Bug#383321: su-to-root => localisation ;-)

[Denis Barbier <barbier@linuxfr.org>]

On Mon, Aug 21, 2006 at 01:54:34PM +0200, Michelle Konzack wrote:
> Am 2006-08-20 08:28:26, schrieb Christian Perrier:
> > > I have attached the 5 files (su-to-root, su-to-root.pot, su-to-root_de.po
> > > and su-to-root_fr.po su-to-root.1) which are tested and they are working.
> > > 
> > > Additionaly I have attached the su-to-root_de.mo and su-to-root_fr.mo.
> > 
> > There are several glitches here and there with regard to i18n:
> > 
> > > usage() {
> > >   GT1=$(gettext 'usage')
> > >   GT2=$(gettext 'user')
> > >   GT3=$(gettext 'command')
> > >   GT4=$(gettext 'command is a X11 program')
> > >   echo "${GT1}: $0 '[-X] [-p <${GT2}>] -c <${GT3}>" >&2
> > >   echo "-X: ${GT4}" >&2
> > >   exit 1
> > 
> > This makes a few assumptions about the languages syntax. Indeed,
> > concatenating strings to rebuild sentences is generally a bad idea in
> > i18n programs as various languages can have various syntax.
> 
> As you can see from the "echo" command, I took only the words which are
> there, and changed nothing. e.g.
> 
>     echo "${GT1}: $0 '[-X] [-p <${GT2}>] -c <${GT3}>" >&2
> was
>     echo "usage: $0 '[-X] [-p <user>] -c <command>" >&2
> 
> which will be in german
> 
>     echo "anwendung: $0 '[-X] [-p <benutzer>] -c <befehl>" >&2
> 
> which is correct.
> The french version would be:
> 
>     echo "Syntaxe: $0 '[-X] [-p <utilisatur>] -c <command>" >&2
> 
> So I see there no problem.

The obvious problem is that translators won't know what to do with
those single words.  You should instead write something like
  usage1=$(gettext 'usage: %s [-X] [-p <user>] -c <command>')
  usage2=$(gettext '   -X: command is a X11 program')
  printf "$usage1\n" $0 >&2
  printf "$usage2\n" >&2

Denis