[freeciv-i18n] Re: [Freeciv-Dev] (PR#19040) Rulesets with identical strings for multiple meanings

[Sini Ruohomaa <sini.ruohomaa@xxxxxx>]

Hi, translators just tuning in (cc'd the list),

I sent bugs a list of ruleset oddities. The first one's sort of clear,
for the last two we could throw a quick poll: is this a problem in your
language?

On Sun, 2006-07-30 at 18:50 -0700, Daniel Markstedt wrote:
> <URL: http://bugs.freeciv.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=19040 >
[2: Identical strings for multiple meanings for nations, e.g. Hacker for
nation + male ruler name]
> The rulesets affected that I could spot on a quick glance:
> > * hacker
> > * european
> What exactly is the problem with European? The 'European' nation group is
> distinguished with ?nationgroup:

It seems it's not caused by the same thing; I just noticed the effects
in the po/pot and missed that. The "European" string, without ?s, is in
all rulesets of people within Europe on line 5 (e.g. the Finnish
ruleset), while it's on line 3 in the European ruleset. I'd guess line 5
does some kind of grouping among nations, like a bunch of rulesets have
"Medieval" there. But the European ruleset uses the same string in
strings like "The %s %s crashes" ("European", "fighter plane"). 

I need to translate the line-3-sort-of European to 'belonging to the
European people' to make sense in those messages*, while it's kind of
stuffy to say of the line-5-sort that the Finnish nation is one of the
nations belonging to the European people. I'd more prefer to say that
it's, um, well, "European". 

[*] This avoids the need to pluralize the adjective when the noun it
refers to is a plural; like "many-European Marksmen" (eurooppalaiset)
vs. "one-European Trireme" (eurooppalainen), but both work with the same
"of-the-Europeans" (eurooppalaisten).

[2: Gender-neutral ruler names - "Is this a problem or am I imagining
it?"]
> * Some rulesets (e.g. european, aymara) seem to define the ruler's name
> > to be the same for male and female. 
> The problem with the title "President of the Commission" is that if I add
> ?female: to it, the string gets too long and the server refuses to load the
> ruleset. Same thing with one title in the Swiss ruleset.

Not accepting long strings even when the real string isn't that long
sounds like a server bug, doesn't it? Yay for recursive debugging. X-)
Does this also mean that the translations should have a size limit or
things might break in strange ways?

But this is where -i18n comes in: hands up, folks, if you have a problem
with translating female and male ruler both to one string. Some of the
English original strings are identical for both, which means gettext
won't pull them apart unless "female?" is added to the other. It's not a
problem for Finnish, but how about languages where there's more
tradition for explicit gendering? 

If you have a male leader called Kari and a female leader called Esko,
can you refer to Kari as "Leader Kari" and Esko as "Leader Esko" using
the same string for 'Leader' - in Russian, Japanese, French, ...? If you
can, then I think we can close this as not quite the bug it seems.

> The problem in the Aymara ruleset is that we have no idea what these titles
> mean anyway. Distinguishing between male and female gender in this case just
> IMO adds unnecessary clutter to the pos.

I've generally stopped translating obscure enough ruler names since
they're kind of fun as is, but I find it kind of hard to draw the line.
The European ruler title is simple, since it's "English by convention"
instead of English-as-local-language -> translate. Haven't checked if we
have doubles like "Chieftain" in the meaning of what ancient
some-Englishish-language-speaking peoples called their leader, and in
the meaning of what we call e.g. an aboriginal leader from the outside
while they might call it a Zxfdabmas if we could ask them. Then I'd want
to leave it as is in the English-speaking tribes and translate it where
it just means "hey, need a leaderish kind-of-low-tech title here".

[3: Chieftains of different eras]
> Also, several rulesets have overlapping ruler titles, which can cause
> > problems when e.g. "Chieftain" might not quite be translateable as
> > 'tribal chieftain' for all nations, but just translating it as a neutral
> > 'leader' for all would be boring. But this is a lesser problem.
> 
> Hm, I think you will have to suggest better titles for our English originals
> then.

Chieftain is now used for
- Cornish
- Gallic
- French
- Irish
- Scottish
- Welsh rulesets.

Hmm, for that, I think I need to know more about the logic behind these.
On a quick look, all but Gallic are tagged Medieval and European, Gallic
is tagged Ancient and European on ruleset line 5. Is there a limitation
to when Chieftain is used (e.g. you start out as Chieftain, but when
things get more modern, you won't be called one)? I figure all of these
nations could be called tribal at *some* point in their existence, but I
somehow feel there's something wrong with calling the post-Medieval
French leader a "tribal leader" even if (s)he decides to change the way
France is governed to e.g. a despotism. Because calling the leader that
implies that the French are a loosely organized set of tribes, which is
a judgement I suspect some French might dislike. :) (Instead, I'll make
offense to tightly-organized tribes by categorizing all to be loose...)

Who knows, if I've just misunderstood the game logic behind the terms it
might make perfect sense to call all chieftains tribal leaders
(heimopaallikko), or is a horror in all cases and someone will send
Asterix to apply some Gallic diplomacy to me for it right after he
finishes building that skylift. :)

> Thank you the bug report/rant! Always a pleasure :-)

Thanks for the quick response, Daniel!

--Sini

[Original rant tail-included]
> On 7/31/06, sini.ruohomaa@xxxxxx <sini.ruohomaa@xxxxxx> wrote:
>         
>         <URL: http://bugs.freeciv.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=19040 >
>         
>         Hi,
>         
>         Some rulesets have identical strings for two incompatible
>         tasks, like
>         Hacker is both the 'adjective' and the male ruler name. These
>         must be
>         separated with a context indicator, since they are not
>         translated the 
>         same way.
> 
> Fixed in attached patch.
>  
> 
>         The rulesets affected that I could spot on a quick glance: 
>         * hacker
>         * european
> 
> What exactly is the problem with European? The 'European' nation group
> is distinguished with ?nationgroup:
>  
> 
>         * Some rulesets (e.g. european, aymara) seem to define the
>         ruler's name
>         to be the same for male and female. But without a context
>         separator, it
>         is also impossible to translate them separately in languages
>         where
>         there's always some difference between men and women. Not that
>         Finnish 
>         is one.
> 
> The problem with the title "President of the Commission" is that if I
> add ?female: to it, the string gets too long and the server refuses to
> load the ruleset. Same thing with one title in the Swiss ruleset. 
> 
> The problem in the Aymara ruleset is that we have no idea what these
> titles mean anyway. Distinguishing between male and female gender in
> this case just IMO adds unnecessary clutter to the pos.
>  
> 
>         Also, several rulesets have overlapping ruler titles, which
>         can cause
>         problems when e.g. "Chieftain" might not quite be
>         translateable as
>         'tribal chieftain' for all nations, but just translating it as
>         a neutral 
>         'leader' for all would be boring. But this is a lesser
>         problem.
> 
> Hm, I think you will have to suggest better titles for our English
> originals then.
>  
> 
>         * confederate, european and soviet define a "Transitional"
>         string, which
>         needs a translator comment on what it means.
>         
>         --Sini
> 
>  
> Added in attached patch.
> 
> Thank you the bug report/rant! Always a pleasure :-) 
> 
> 
> --Daniel
>