How to translate the string has context prefix?

[Dancefire]

On Tue, Apr 27, 2010 at 11:28 AM, Derek Atkins <warlord at mit.edu> wrote:
> Cristian Marchi <cri79 at libero.it> writes:
>
>> The part before the "|" is just a description so you should only
>> translate what is after that symbol (specifically the term "Deposit")
>> The correct syntax for your case would be:
>>
>> msgid "Action Column|Deposit"
>> msgstr "存款"
>>
>> Note that in the translation you are not supposed to include the "|" symbol.
>
> Oh, for some reason I thought the translation should have been
>
> msgid "Action Column|Deposit"
> msgstr "Action Column|存款"
>
> I guess I was incorrect.  I thought there were some translations where
> you specifically needed to keep the early part of the string.  But
> perhaps that's more likely in the cases of something like:
>
> msgid "reconciled:y"
>

For the message you mentioned, "reconciled:y", I double checked the
string and there is no any comment for translator, but I went further
and checked the source and I found the comments for translators are
put in wrong place.
----------
    switch (reconciled_flag)
    {
        /* Translators: For the following strings, the single letters
           after the colon are abbreviations of the word before the
           colon. You should only translate the letter *after* the colon. */
    case NREC:
        return string_after_colon(_("not cleared:n"));
        /* Translators: Please only translate the letter *after* the colon. */
    case CREC:
        return string_after_colon(_("cleared:c"));
        /* Translators: Please only translate the letter *after* the colon. */
    case YREC:
        return string_after_colon(_("reconciled:y"));
        /* Translators: Please only translate the letter *after* the colon. */
    case FREC:
        return string_after_colon(_("frozen:f"));
        /* Translators: Please only translate the letter *after* the colon. */
    case VREC:
        return string_after_colon(_("void:v"));
    default:
        PERR("Bad reconciled flag\n");
        return NULL;
    }
-----------

And for this case, what is the rule for translation of the letter,
such as 'y' after ":"? Does it have to be a single ASCII letter? or a
single Unicode character? or, I can use more than one character to
represent it?

>> Regards
>> Cristian
>
> -derek
> --
>       Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
>       Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
>       URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/    PP-ASEL-IA     N1NWH
>       warlord at MIT.EDU                        PGP key available
>



-- 
Regards

Tao Wang