[Freeciv-Dev] Re: (PR#2565) Plural form needed for unit types

["Jason Short via RT" <rt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, 2002-12-13 at 09:27, Guest via RT wrote:
> 
> Plural forms are needed for unit types. The message in "unithand.c",  
> "void handle_upgrade_unittype_request(struct player *, struct  
> packet_unittype_info *)":  
>   
>       "Game: %d %s upgraded to %s for %d gold."  
>   
> needs plural forms (at least in some translations). 

I agree with Raimar that it unnecessary (perhaps even impossible) to
provide plural forms for all unit names.

Right now, in the above case the English is:

  "Game: 1 settlers upgraded to engineers for 40 gold."
  "Game: 2 settlers upgraded to engineers for 40 gold."

which doesn't sound quite right, but is probably ok ("1 settlers" is
probably correct, since the "settlers unit" no doubt has lots of
"settlers" in it).  But in other languages (e.g., Swedish) the verb
needs to match the number as well - this is (I'm guessing) a bigger
grammatical problem, and also easy to fix.  So the text should be either

  PL_("Game: %d %s upgraded to %s for %d gold.",
      "Game: %d %s upgraded to %s for %d gold.",
      number_of_upgraded_units);

or

  PL_("Game: %d unit of %s upgraded to %s for %d gold.",
      "Game: %d units of %s upgraded to %s for %d gold.",
      number_of_upgraded_units);

which is functionally identical when translated, but perhaps provides
slightly better English.

(Think of it as one or more "units of settlers", not one or more
"settlers", and it makes sense that no plural form is needed or
desired.  But perhaps this, too, varies from language to language...)

-----

Now, you say there are many places in the code that need these changes. 
But as a native English speaker, I don't easily see the places where
there are verb mismatches.  So I suggest that a translator who wants to
fix this (Erik) go through and make a patch to introduce PL_ into such
places.  You can fix the English at the same time if you want (or not).

jason