F9 Countdown Translation

[Ricky Zhou]

In the spirit of making our website more l10n-friendly, we want to try
translating the F9 release counter this time around.  Unfortunately, we
weren't able to just stuff all of this into a PO file, as the placement
of the text may need to be adjusted for different languages.  

Here's how we'd like to do it:

At http://ricky.fedorapeople.org/fedora9-countdown-banner.svg, we have
an SVG file that you should be able to open with inkscape:

sudo yum install inkscape
inkscape http://ricky.fedorapeople.org/fedora9-countdown-banner.svg

In Inkscape, we pretty much just need the string: "released in ... days"
to be translated.  Feel free to move the number around, but there's no
need to change the value (please keep it with arabic numerals, since
we're going to be generating the images for each day).  

Transifex should give translators access to upload this SVG in the po
directory (just save it to po/fedora9-countdown-banner.LANG.svg).

I'm really curious to see how this will work out.  It's not a *absolute*
requirement, but it'd sure be nice to have that part of the site be
translated as well :)

Let us know if you have any questions/issues.

Thanks,
Ricky

[Alexandru Szasz]

On Sun, Apr 6, 2008 at 10:50 PM, Ricky Zhou <ricky(a)fedoraproject.org&gt; wrote:
>  In the spirit of making our website more l10n-friendly, we want to
> try
>   translating the F9 release counter this time around.  Unfortunately, we
>   weren't able to just stuff all of this into a PO file, as the placement
>   of the text may need to be adjusted for different languages.
>
>   Here's how we'd like to do it:
>
>   At http://ricky.fedorapeople.org/fedora9-countdown-banner.svg, we have
>   an SVG file that you should be able to open with inkscape:
>
>   sudo yum install inkscape
>   inkscape http://ricky.fedorapeople.org/fedora9-countdown-banner.svg
>
>   In Inkscape, we pretty much just need the string: "released in ... days"
>   to be translated.  Feel free to move the number around, but there's no
>   need to change the value (please keep it with arabic numerals, since
>   we're going to be generating the images for each day).
>
>   Transifex should give translators access to upload this SVG in the po
>   directory (just save it to po/fedora9-countdown-banner.LANG.svg).
>
>   I'm really curious to see how this will work out.  It's not a *absolute*
>   requirement, but it'd sure be nice to have that part of the site be
>   translated as well :)
>
>   Let us know if you have any questions/issues.
>
>   Thanks,
>   Ricky
>  
Hi,

I already translated this svg and created all the images and a counter
for my website, but I can't just send one svg because my language
(Romanian) has more plural forms, not just one, so after 20 I'd have
to use another plural and for 1 I'd have to use the translation for
day not days.

-- 
Alexandru Szasz

[Ricky Zhou]

On 2008-04-06 11:13:00 PM, Alexandru Szasz wrote:
>  I already translated this svg and created all the images and a
> counter
>  for my website, but I can't just send one svg because my language
>  (Romanian) has more plural forms, not just one, so after 20 I'd have
>  to use another plural and for 1 I'd have to use the translation for
>  day not days. 
That's cool - can you give us a tarball of your translated PNGs,
then?  

Thanks a lot,
Ricky

[Alexandru Szasz]

On Sun, Apr 6, 2008 at 11:28 PM, Ricky Zhou <ricky(a)fedoraproject.org&gt; wrote:
>  On 2008-04-06 11:13:00 PM, Alexandru Szasz wrote:
>   > I already translated this svg and created all the images and a counter
>   > for my website, but I can't just send one svg because my language
>   > (Romanian) has more plural forms, not just one, so after 20 I'd have
>   > to use another plural and for 1 I'd have to use the translation for
>   > day not days.
>   That's cool - can you give us a tarball of your translated PNGs, then?
>
>   Thanks a lot,
>   Ricky 
Sent it.

For those interested in trying, make sure you have mgopen fonts
installed first, otherwise the word SULFUR will spread too much.

So, yum -y install mgopen-fonts

-- 
Alexandru Szasz

[Ricky Zhou]

On 2008-04-06 11:13:00 PM, Alexandru Szasz wrote:
>  I already translated this svg and created all the images and a
> counter
>  for my website, but I can't just send one svg because my language
>  (Romanian) has more plural forms, not just one, so after 20 I'd have
>  to use another plural and for 1 I'd have to use the translation for
>  day not days. 
Oh, and another good point - I completely forgot about accounting
for
the simgular vs. plural word.  Any suggestions?  Should we ask that
translators send in a separate SVG with the singular as well?  

Ricky

[Alexandru Szasz]

On Mon, Apr 7, 2008 at 5:19 AM, Ricky Zhou <ricky(a)fedoraproject.org&gt; wrote:
>  On 2008-04-06 11:13:00 PM, Alexandru Szasz wrote:
>
>  > I already translated this svg and created all the images and a counter
>   > for my website, but I can't just send one svg because my language
>   > (Romanian) has more plural forms, not just one, so after 20 I'd have
>   > to use another plural and for 1 I'd have to use the translation for
>   > day not days.
>   Oh, and another good point - I completely forgot about accounting for
>   the simgular vs. plural word.  Any suggestions?  Should we ask that
>   translators send in a separate SVG with the singular as well?
>
>   Ricky
>  
Do you think it's that hard that all languages find words that fit in
that space ? So that the 2 texts can be in a text file ?
There are about 9 letters available for "Launch" and for "days". And
"Launch" doesn't have to be necessarily be "Launch" when
translating,
it could be "Out in x days", so I think there's a possibility to
create a .po file and put in a comment that there's space only for 9
letters, if the translator can't do it, a link to someone he can
contact.

-- 
Alexandru Szasz

[Alan Cox]

On Mon, Apr 07, 2008 at 08:33:34AM +0300, Alexandru Szasz wrote:
>  There are about 9 letters available for "Launch" and for
> "days". And
>  "Launch" doesn't have to be necessarily be "Launch" when
> translating,
>  it could be "Out in x days", so I think there's a possibility to 
This also doesn't work for some languages. The 'x' changes the days word in
at least some Celtic languages and singular/plural is itself a non portable
idea in others (eg zero is plural form in English, singular in many languages,
all number forms are singular in some languages etc)

In x days is one of those things where it is best to either use

"Days to go:"

type formats or offer a lot of complete strings

[Alexandru Szasz]

On Mon, Apr 7, 2008 at 6:45 PM, Alan Cox <alan(a)redhat.com&gt; wrote:
>  On Mon, Apr 07, 2008 at 08:33:34AM +0300, Alexandru Szasz wrote:
>   > There are about 9 letters available for "Launch" and for
> "days". And
>   > "Launch" doesn't have to be necessarily be "Launch" when
> translating,
>   > it could be "Out in x days", so I think there's a possibility to
>
>   This also doesn't work for some languages. The 'x' changes the days word in
>   at least some Celtic languages and singular/plural is itself a non portable
>   idea in others (eg zero is plural form in English, singular in many languages,
>   all number forms are singular in some languages etc)
>
>   In x days is one of those things where it is best to either use
>
>   "Days to go:"
>
>   type formats or offer a lot of complete strings
>  
I was proposing something like this (using romanian, singular + 2 plural forms):

msgid "Launch in %d day"
msgid_plural "Launch in %d days"
msgstr[0] "Lansare în %d zi"
msgstr[1] "Lansare în %d zile"
msgstr[2] "Lansare în %d de zile"

This must cover all languages, the only problem would be if "Launch
in" would be longer than 9 characters.

-- 
Alexandru Szasz

[Christian Rose]

On 4/7/08, Alan Cox <alan(a)redhat.com&gt; wrote:
>  On Mon, Apr 07, 2008 at 08:33:34AM +0300, Alexandru Szasz wrote:
>   > There are about 9 letters available for "Launch" and for
> "days". And
>   > "Launch" doesn't have to be necessarily be "Launch" when
> translating,
>   > it could be "Out in x days", so I think there's a possibility to
>
>   This also doesn't work for some languages. The 'x' changes the days word in
>   at least some Celtic languages and singular/plural is itself a non portable
>   idea in others (eg zero is plural form in English, singular in many languages,
>   all number forms are singular in some languages etc)
>
>   In x days is one of those things where it is best to either use
>
>   "Days to go:"
>
>   type formats or offer a lot of complete strings 
This is indeed a big problem for many languages that have several plural forms.
If you want to keep the "Released in %d days" wording, there's no way
around using ngettext on the string (and using po files), and
producing the svg using the result from that. This whole problem was
the very reason ngettext was invented.


Christian