[freeciv-i18n] Re: (PR#19049) Problematic/buggy strings.

[Christian Knoke <chrisk@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hello,

Sini Ruohomaa wrote on Aug 01, 19:55 (+0300):
> <URL: http://bugs.freeciv.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=3D19049 >

You are quite right to post these things. I still don't understand all
grammatical odds of my own language, but I think your suggestions will
help also other translators.

As to the leader / nation names:

> > >>> ------------------------------------------------------------
> > > [We can't follow these kinds of inflictions, and why's %s not e.g.
> > > "(the) Finnish"?]
> > 
> > I don't follow.
> 
> Abbreviated to the point of mangling, it just repeats that we were
> talking about how "%s's" can't be translated, and that %s is suddenly a
> person's name instead of the people's name, which you caught up on on an
> earlier round already. Just to remind, the message was:
> 
> >> msgid "You receive %s's worldmap."
> 
> And if it were e.g. "You recieve the %s worldmap.", filled with
> "Finnish" (instead of e.g. "Tarja Halonen" or "sini"), we can use a word
> that's already been modified to fit that kind of role in a sentence.
> 
> "You recieve the Finnish worldmap." 
>   ~> Vastaanotat suomalaisten maailmankartan. 
> "The Finnish Pikemen attacks." 
>   ~> Suomalaisten yksikk=F6 Keih=E4smiehet hy=F6kk=E4=E4.
>   <~ Finnish unit (to force the sentence into singular) Pikemen attacks.
> Basically the same 'suomalaisten' works here (there's the capitalization
> challenge, but I think that was a in a different mail).
> 
> If the original message uses name-genetive:
> "You recieve Tarja's worldmap."
>   Literal translation:
>   ~> Vastaanotat Tarjan maailmankartan. 
>      Won't work: if name ends in a consonant like 'John', genetive
>      should be +in (JohnIN) not +n (TarjaN)) - Vastaanotat Johnn
>      maailmankartan is just plain wrong.
>   Avoid the problem by dropping the genetive:
>   ~> Vastaanotat maailmankartan jonka Tarja n=E4kee. (cludgy)
>      You-recieve world-map      which Tarja sees. (sounds as bad in
>      English as it does in Finnish)

I think, using the nation name in almost any case is superior to the
leader name. It allows better translations and it is easier to *play*
with, consider having 10 nations with leader names (and possible user
names, too) remember and put them right together through all the game.

Of course, leader names are nice, and you will need them in the chat,
so we could *add* them to all the places where it is appropriate. They
won't hurt in normal messages even when these get a bit longer this
way.

"The Swedish leader Rollo asks you the leave his Territory NOW."

BTW, we need some way to do automatic line breaks with messages.
Screens are not always 1600*1200 and languages are not always as short
as English is.

Christian

PS: Hhm, does gettext support a gender form?

-- 
Christian Knoke            * * *            http://cknoke.de
* * * * * * * * *  Ceterum censeo Microsoft esse dividendum.