[PATCH HEAD] i18n fixes

[Ineiev]

On Fri, Oct 07, 2016 at 11:18:37AM +0200, Werner Koch wrote:
> On Fri,  7 Oct 2016 08:44, ineiev at gnu.org said:
> 
> > I wonder if pgettext is really non-portable.
> 
> The gettext checks try to make use of other gettext implemntations.
> pgettext is not available on non GNU systems and anyway pretty new.

pgettext is added in gettext-0.15; configure.ac says,
AM_GNU_GETTEXT_VERSION([0.17]), whatever it means. however, pgettext
isn't a function, it's a macro implemented using dcgettext (yes,
the application is to distribute that macro with its sources),
and dcgettext was already present in the first official release
of GNU gettext (1995). so pgettext is not effectively new.

> > Indeed, the number of fragments can be dramatically reduced in this
> > message, with more context provided. the drawback is that the total
> > volume of msgids increases because the new strings share more parts.
> 
> Let me quote from the gettext manual:
> 
>      Translatable strings should be entire sentences.  It is often not
>   possible to translate single verbs or adjectives in a substitutable way.
> 
>   [...]  
>   
>      Entire sentences are also important because in many languages, the
>   declination of some word in a sentence depends on the gender or the
>   number (singular/plural) of another part of the sentence.  There are
>   usually more interdependencies between words than in English.  The
>   consequence is that asking a translator to translate two half-sentences
>   and then combining these two half-sentences through dumb string
>   concatenation will not work, for many languages, even though it would
>   work for English.  That’s why translators need to handle entire
>   sentences.

Thank you!

Applied to time_ago_str: does that mean that it should return

(0) complete sentences like
   "Days of observed period: %i.\n"
   "Months of observed period: %i.\n"
   "Years of observed period: %i.\n"

(1) a single sentence with reduced precision like
   "Observed period is %i~months.\n"

(2) something else?
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 473 bytes
Desc: Digital signature
URL: </pipermail/attachments/20161013/c33a59a3/attachment.sig>