Translations problems

Joachim Sauer saua at gmx.net
Mon May 21 06:44:35 EDT 2007


Hy,

I've recently started translating referencer to german (via
launchpad.net), because I'm using it and it's really usefull for me.

I'm not a professional translator, so anyone who wants to check and/or
correct my translations is of course very much welcome to do so ;-)

But I've hit a minor problem. Some strings can't really be translated
properly, due to the way they are used in the source code. The problem
is that the word order is different in english and german. A good
example is the String "Contacting crossref.org to retrieve metadata
for". It is used by appending the DOI that should be retrieved.

If I were to translate this sentence to german, it would look something
like this:

"Kontaktiere crossref.org, um Metadaten für »%1« abzurufen". So there is
still something after the DOI. The way it's implemented right now
doesn't allow for such a translation.

I think the (current) Code:

Glib::ustring messagetext =
	String::ucompose (
	_("<b><big>%1</big></b>\n\n%2 '%3'\n"),
	_("Downloading metadata"),
	_("Contacting crossref.org to retrieve metadata for"),
	doi_);


should be replaced with something like this:

Glib::ustring messagetext =
	String::ucompose (
	_("<b><big>%1</big></b>\n\n%2\n"),
	_("Downloading metadata"),
	String::ucompose (
		_("Contacting crossref.org to retrieve metadata for '%1'"),
		doi_)
	);

But then again I haven't written any C++ in ages, so take it with a
grain of salt.

I assume that other languages have a similar problem, so solving this
wouldn't be good for german only.

regards
Joachim Sauer
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