Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH 7/9] gtk: add translation support (v5)

[Andreas Färber]

Am 20.02.2013 17:16, schrieb Daniel P. Berrange:
> On Wed, Feb 20, 2013 at 05:10:54PM +0100, Andreas Färber wrote:
>> Am 20.02.2013 14:43, schrieb Anthony Liguori:
>>> This includes a de_DE translation from Kevin Wolf and an it translation from
>>> Paolo Bonzini.
>>>
>>> Cc: Paolo Bonzini <address@hidden>
>>> Cc: Kevin Wolf <address@hidden>
>>> Cc: Stefan Hajnoczi <address@hidden>
>>> Signed-off-by: Anthony Liguori <address@hidden>
>>> ---
>>> v1 -> v4
>>>  - Don't use '|| exit 1' with sub-invocation of make
>>>  - Actually include Kevin's translation
>>> v4 -> v5
>>>  - Update translations (Kevin and Paolo)
>>>  - Fix 'make update' for it.po
>>> ---
>>>  Makefile       |  3 +++
>>>  configure      |  4 +++-
>>>  po/Makefile    | 46 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>>>  po/de_DE.po    | 45 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>>>  po/it.po       | 45 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>>>  po/messages.po | 45 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>>>  ui/gtk.c       | 22 +++++++++++++++-------
>>>  7 files changed, 202 insertions(+), 8 deletions(-)
>>>  create mode 100644 po/Makefile
>>>  create mode 100644 po/de_DE.po
>>>  create mode 100644 po/it.po
>>>  create mode 100644 po/messages.po
>>
>> IIUC this uses the English texts as key for lookup of translations.
>> Experience shows that while that is most convenient for the English it
>> leads to grammatical mistakes in other languages due to text reuse in
>> wrong contexts. A prominent example is "Server" being translated as
>> "Kellner" (which is waiter) in some early Windows NT version. :) More
>> recent examples commonly found are ambiguities of, e.g., "Update" as
>> noun vs. imperative - happens if the same wording is used in a menu and
>> in some options dialog or status text. Similar for ing-forms translated
>> as noun vs. infinitive vs. first-person present.
>>
>> Better would be to use unique alphanumeric identifiers (e.g.,
>> "Menu.File.Quit") and to have a regular translation file for en (or
>> whatever suitable as fallback).
> 
> Your points may be valid, but this patch follows standard practice for
> i18n of any GTK app, in fact standard across pretty much all open
> source projects I've worked on. I don't think QEMU should try to do
> something non-standard for translation files.

Not having translations may be better quality-wise than having known
broken translations just because that is considered standard practice by
English speakers that don't actually see or need them.

Andreas

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