[translation] Why are locale specific reports registered in po file?

[Geert Janssens]

On Thursday 1 April 2010, Christian Stimming wrote:
> Zitat von Yasuaki Taniguchi/???? <yasuakit at gmail.com>:
> > I wonder why entries of locale specific reports (ex. US tax reports)
> > are registered in po files?
> > I think they are not only meaningless but also harmful. So they should
> > be removed from po files and
> > they are written in the original locale language.
> 
> Yes, you are most probably right.
> 
> I think the reason why they are still in there is that it is still
> rather unclear how to handle this sort of features. In theory they are
> not language-dependent but rather country-dependent, but in the
> context of gnucash we never really thought this through. Currently,
> the U.S. tax report is shown as a menu item in any language (except
> de_DE if --enable-locale-specific-tax was enabled), which means it
> should display something meaningful in non-english languages as well.
> However, we should change this behaviour so that either the report
> appears in the menu only in english locales, or that non-english
> languages show some meaningful explanation as for why the report
> itself will be in english only. In any case I agree the report itself
> should be in english only, so we should remove the translation macros
> from there.
> 
I agree that GnuCash would benefit from a method to provide country dependent 
features, such as a country specific tax report. I believe this idea has been 
suggested before.

But assuming country specific features wouldn't require translation would be a 
mistake. USA and Germany have only one national language, so it would make 
sense to have the features only in that language. But other countries have 
multiple national languages. Belgium for example has three, South-Africa I 
believe even 11.

For such countries, the country specific features would need to be translated 
as well.

For the 2.4 release, I agree to remove the translation status of the tax 
report. It's US only and would make sense to be in English only as well.

But if country awareness will eventually be added to GnuCash, I think we 
should add some form of translation support for it. Presently, I don't know in 
which form yet.

Regards,

Geert