Translation problems

[A. Alper ATICI]

Hello, 

I have to barge in, since I too suffer from this issue.

Some strings are used in many different contexts, this makes translation 
to non-Germanic languages very difficult. 

I think Reinke has a good point, fallback to "C" locale should be 
eliminated, but:

> The programmer should write _("New Account"), _("New Loan") or _("New
> Invoice") in the source code. 

I think this puts some unfair burden on the developer. 
Context difference is the problem of translators, and they should guide
the developer via reference comments in PO file.

How about mangling msgid's? i.e. "New", "New at 001#", "New at 002#"... 
This way, there will always be a "New" as before, and en_US.po will 
contain:

msgid "New"
msgstr ""

msgid "New at 001#"
msgstr "New"

msgid "New at 002#"
msgstr "New"


while PO file of some foreign language will be:

msgid "New"
msgstr "blah-blah"

msgid "New at 001#"
msgstr "daba-daba"

msgid "New at 002#"
msgstr "yada-yada"


If some translator wishes for a new "New" in the future, the developer 
will just add a new mangled "New", get related ref. comments split 
feedback from the translator, and update "New" strings of gettext calls
accordingly. 

One basic rule has to be applied all the time:
A mangled msgid must not have empty msgstr in any PO file.


Let me give you a specific case I've been suffering from:

The way "Days" is used in Billing Terms is very different from that in 
Scheduled Transaction Editor, so I wish we had 2 "Days" as follows:

#: src/business/business-gnome/glade/billterms.glade:662
#: src/business/business-gnome/glade/billterms.glade:873
#: src/business/business-gnome/dialog-billterms.c:478
msgid "Days"
msgstr "blah-blah"

#: src/gnome/glade/sched-xact.glade:1167 src/gnome-utils/gnc-date-delta.c
#: intl-scm/guile-strings.c:2275
msgid "Days"
msgstr "daba-daba"


Now, how difficult is that for the developer?


best regards,

A. Alper ATICI