[maemo-developers] Maemo localization to officially non-supported languages

[From: Kimmo Hämäläinen]

On Wed, 2007-10-24 at 14:56 +0300, Marius Vollmer wrote:
> Kimmo Hämäläinen <kimmo.hamalainen at nokia.com> writes:
> 
> > Wrong.  It would depend on the context and language.
> 
> Yes, it COULD, fer-crying-out-loudly. :) We have the data now to
> figure out whether it actually DOES for the set of our supported
> languages.

'For the set of our supported languages' -- quoting you -- 'that way
lies madness'. You would need to do this verification every time you add
a new language, or change the context a bit.

> > And what happens when you add a new, more 'context-sensitive'
> > language?
> 
> We change the code.  Simple.  Providing unneeded context is bad in my
> opinion, and the way we do it with the logical ids is excessivly ugly.

You also need to retranslate and test all the supported languages for
the new strings (some of that you could maybe automate). Changing the
code is the easy part. Why not make the engineering English unique, and
use it instead of the logical ids ("OK 1", "OK 2" ;)), hey, we do it
with variable names in code already...

> Also, how do you know whether I use the correct context in my code?
> Maybe I am using "ai_bd_ok" for all my "OK" buttons?

The localisation testers will notice that, sooner or later.

> In general, we should try to reduce the need for context and
> complicated translations.  The classical example might:
> 
>    Searched in %d files and %d directories.

Yeah, but if you reduce the context too much, the language quality will
be comparable to a baby's babbling, and soon some man from Tibet will
come and kick your ass! ;)

> You will never be able to translate this nicely for all languages
> because of the wierd way they handle plurals, etc, and because of the
> combinatorial explosion.  A better way is:
> 
>    Number of files searched: %d
>    Number of directories searched: %d

Sure, there are some examples like that.

BR; Kimmo