[Vtigercrm-developers] A translation question (i18n)

[Kristóf KOVÁCS]

Hello Prasad,
thanks for your answer! Of course, I don't wish to force a language cleanup
on your team. :) I'm merely thinking about developing the foundation, the
infrastructure for such a change, and then, I hope, individual translators
of different languages would do the modifications in both the TPL and the
language files. I would certainly do our own part, Hungarian translation
requires different word order at several places.

But I want to discuss the concepts with you guys, since for such a change,
it requires consensus (I also would like to hear opinions from veteran
translators of the project). Also it would be very bad if our development
tree would diverge from yours, both in terms of maintenance (for us), and in
opportunity lost (for everybody).

Prasad, we all know and trust you as one of the best core developers, so
just one question: what do You say, just from the top of your head, would
there be any better solution for the problem, or should we go think forward
with the "added-Smarty-printf-function" solution? (Would you accept into the
codebase the patches we would be starting to send in of modified TPL files
and language files?)

Kristóf

On Mon, Nov 24, 2008 at 3:52 PM, Prasad <prasad at vtiger.com> wrote:

> Hi Kristof,
>
> This issues has been brought up earlier as well. To make the translation
> clean up all-over the product it could
> take more effort both in terms of development and validation. Currently we
> are focusing on getting in new features
> as we go along we can better plan for language cleanup's as well. This give
> us more focused work items.
>
> We would appreciate community help in identifying such language or
> translation issues.
>
> Regards,
> Prasad
>
> On 11/24/08, Kristóf KOVÁCS <kristof.kovacs at onlineprojects.hu> wrote:
>
>> Hello Tigers,
>> I was talking with Dávid of CafeOpen about vTiger translations, and there
>> is one issue which my team often faces with, and this is word order. Let me
>> illustrate it with an example (using German instead of Hungarian to make it
>> more clear, but the concept is the same).
>>
>> For example, in ActivityEditView.tpl there is the following code:
>>
>> <input title="{$APP.LBL_ADD_NEW} {$APP.Contact}" .....
>>
>> And this shows a button called "Add Contact". It seems all well since
>> "$APP.LBL_ADD_NEW" is "Add" and "$APP.Contact" is "Contact".
>>
>> But "Add Contact" in German is "Kontakt hinzufügen" (notice that the words
>> are in a different order). Now we have a problem since "{$APP.LBL_ADD_NEW}
>> {$APP.Contact}" can not be forced to display this, and saying "hinzufügen
>> Kontakt" does not sound quite right (it sounds very bad indeed).
>>
>> Translation quirks can circumvent some of such problems (one could write
>> "Neue Contact"), but often these strings are reused at other parts of the
>> code, and fixing it in one place often destroys grammar at other places.
>>
>> One idea would be to use printf()-like format strings to correct such
>> issues, even if it may require an introduction of a now Smarty function. I'm
>> thinking along the lines of something like this:
>>
>> {a_smarty_printf_function
>> $APP.ADD_NEW_SOMETHING_FORMATSTRING, $APP.LBL_ADD_NEW, $APP.Contact}
>>
>> Then, in english, the .lang file would read:
>> [...]
>> 'LBL_ADD_NEW' = 'Add',
>> 'Contact' => 'Contact',
>> 'ADD_NEW_SOMETHING_FORMATSTRING' => "'%s %s", // Very simple format
>> string, no surprise here
>> [...]
>>
>> And in german, it would be:
>> [...]
>> 'LBL_ADD_NEW' = 'Hinzufügen',
>> 'Contact' => 'Kontakt',
>> 'ADD_NEW_SOMETHING_FORMATSTRING' => "'%2$s %1$s", // Notice how I used
>> "1$" and "2$" to access arguments in different order
>> [...]
>>
>> I don't feel it elegant enough (but more elegant than the original), so
>> comments, suggestions, ideas, better solutions are very much welcome. Please
>> all brainstorm this ever the next coffee. :o)
>>
>> Kristóf
>>
>> _______________________________________________
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>>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
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