How to translate plural forms in zanata online editor?

Tue Oct 27 05:52:12 UTC 2015

----- Original Message -----
> On Mon, Oct 26, 2015 at 11:05 PM, Ding Yi Chen <dchen at redhat.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> > ----- Original Message -----
> >> On Sun, Oct 25, 2015 at 1:02 PM, Jérôme Fenal <jfenal at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> > 2015-10-24 18:32 GMT+02:00 Alick Zhao <alick9188 at gmail.com>:
> >> >> Howdy,
> >> >>
> >> >> I have not looked close at fedora.zanata.org lately, and it seems now
> >> >> zanata shows strings with singular/plural forms in *one* textbox in
> >> >> its online editor, as in screenshot [1]. I am wondering what is the
> >> >> right way to translate them? I tried to search through the zanata
> >> >> docs, but cannot find it. Hope someone can point out for me. Thanks!
> >> >>
> >> >> [1] http://susepaste.org/83191113
> >> >
> >> > Hi Alick,
> >> >
> >> > You'd need to actually check in the source if the mix of singular and
> >> > plural form are handled.
> >> >
> >> > Zanata does present the two alternatives when the code for the
> >> > translated messages does handle it.
> >> >
> >>
> >> Yes, I do see the two alternatives with two radio buttons. My question
> >> is: How to translate both two strings in one entry box? Should I first
> >> translate the first one, then press the second radio button, and then
> >> translate the second one? The warning messages appear when I tried to
> >> do these, so I am not quite sure what is the right thing to do...
> >
> > If you translates string from the language with plural (e.g. English)
> > to the language without plural (e.g. Chinese).
> >
> > Normally you only need to translate the singular (the first) string.
> > The radio buttons there are merely for copy from source string.
> 
> Well, I guess Chinese do have singular/plural differences in a sense.
> For example,
> 
> Last week --> 上周
> 
> {0:d} weeks ago --> （数字）周前

Please warn the gnome-abrt upstream the way they handle plural will break the languages where
the first form is not one. [1]

For example, French's "singular" form includes 0 and 1 (while in English, 0 is plural).
So if function outputs 0, the French equivalent of "Last Week" will be used, which may be wrong.

And as for Chinese, the thing you translated become
msgstr[0] "上周\n"
"\n"
"{0:d} 周前"

a three-lined string no matter what function returned.

If the function returns 1, user will see:
上周

1 周前

If the function return 3, user will see:
上周

3 周前

If the upstream does not fix it in time, I suggest you go with

{0:d} weeks ago --> {0:d} 周前

Reference:
1. http://www.unicode.org/cldr/charts/latest/supplemental/language_plural_rules.html

> 
> --
> Regards,
> Alick
> --
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-- 
Ding-Yi Chen
Software Engineer
Globalization Group
DID: +61 7 3514 8239
Email: dchen at redhat.com

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