Some language bugs

Marti

These should probably go to the wiki, but I'm posting them here first for reference. Maybe other's can add their own here as well. I translated Vanilla into Estonian and here are the bugs I've noticed so far:

• Though the entry $Context->Dictionary["Applicant"] is translated, the URL that's used for finding new applicants is not. It took me a while to figure out that I had to change the word "Applicant" in ".../search.php?PostBackAction=Search&Type=Users&Keywords=roles:Applicant;sort:Date;" to the translated word to find the new applicants.
• When viewing other users' accounts as an administrator, in the phrase "someone's account options" the suffix -'s after the username seems to be hard-coded. I wish it weren't.
• The phrase for "AssignToRole" (at .../account.php?PostBackAction=Role&u=####) does not seem to be in the dictionary.

While the English language has prepositions, the Estonian language has cases (Inessive case ("in"), Elative case ("out of"), Illative case ("into"), Allative case ("onto") and Ablative case ("from off of") to name a few), which are alterations of nouns that represent their role (read more here). Here are some bugs that might be specific to my language:

• The phrase "Terms of Service" has a different case and is therefore spelt differently when it is in the sentence "I have read and agree to the ....." and when it is by itself in the footer of the forum. If it does not over-complicate things, maybe there could be different dictionary entries for this?
• The word "new" also has different cases when it is in the context of "number of NEW comments: 123" (as is the case in the discussion listings) and "123 NEW members" (as is the case with "Membership applicants" in the control panel), so maybe these could be separate entries in the dictionary as well?
• This is one that might not have a good solution, but when I name a category in singular form and look at its discussion list, the phrase "CategoryName Discussions" is not grammatically correct in Estonian (i.e. "General" -> "Ãœldine"; "General Discussions" -> "Ãœldised arutelud": notice how the word changes?). Actually, come to think of it, if the word "Discussions" was singular, it would be correct... That's another entry that could perhaps be separated.

I realize that multi-language support was an after-thought so if these changes seem too complicated or unimportant, I'll just try to translate the phrases in other ways until they look acceptable.

Mark

No, this is great. Thanks for the comments. I'm going to try to think of the best way to accomodate for these changes. One big change that I've been considering is using a little bit of regex on some of the phrases. For example, some sentences in the dictionary are parts of a full phrase, like: "There are " + $Variable1 +" new comments in the " + $Variable2 + " discussion" When I originally put the codes in there, I would take a phrase like that and make three codes. But I realize now that it just won't work in most languages other than english. Words relate to other words in different order in different languages. so, instead I think I'll change the language dictionary to use replacements like this: "There are //1 new comments in the //2 discussion" That would be one full dictionary definition. Then when I parse the phrase, I do a regex replace on the //1 and the //2 with my variables. So, you can essentially put my variables wherever you want. Is that a decent solution? Anyway - I'm going to have to think of a few of these other ones...

Minisweeper

n.b., #1 has been documented before. And we still have that css issue where sentances are longer than they are in english (i think anyway?) Otherwise good stuff!... stupid foreign languages ;)

ichigo

the regex thing is a great idea....i had to do some strange sentences in the german translation to fit the order. and it would be great to split the "to" in 2 different translations...because in german "1 to 4" is not the same as "mark to minisweeper" "1 bis 4" and"mark (zu | an) minisweeper"

Marti

@minisweeper: You're right, it's already documented.. I didn't find it in the forums, but it is in the bug list. I also like the regex idea, Mark. I'm probably gonna use that system in a product catalog I'm developing. I've noticed that some web applications (Wordpress and Drupal come to mind) use GNU gettext.. What are the pros and cons of that?

Mark

I don't even know what GNU gettext is. Does anyone else?

dknowles

GNU `gettext' is an important step for the GNU Translation Project, as it is an asset on which we may build many other steps. This package offers to programmers, translators, and even users, a well integrated set of tools and documentation. Specifically, the GNU `gettext' utilities are a set of tools that provides a framework to help other GNU packages produce multi-lingual messages. These tools include a set of conventions about how programs should be written to support message catalogs, a directory and file naming organization for the message catalogs themselves, a runtime library supporting the retrieval of translated messages, and a few stand-alone programs to massage in various ways the sets of translatable strings, or already translated strings.

http://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/

dknowles

Wow, this is actually really cool. There's already a PHP library for it (built-in, as long as gettext is on your webserver--which it should be on any *nix, because it's a GNUtool)

There's a couple of basic exampes in the php manual comments here: http://www.php.net/manual/en/ref.gettext.php

alexis

Hi, I would like to add that the "wait" word that appears after clicking "Add your comments" is not in the dictionary, I'm using a spanish translation and can't find any line referring to this word. Any suggestions?

lech

suggestion : wait till the release of the next version :)

Mark

Please start a new topic in "Vanilla 0.9.3 Bugs" and mention anything like this that you find. I don't know what I've missed and what I haven't, so it would really help me if translation authors/users could help me out with that.