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[Richard Mansfield <901051@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

** Changed in: mahara
       Status: In Progress => Fix Committed

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/901051

Title:
  Allow correct translation of plurals

Status in Mahara ePortfolio:
  Fix Committed

Bug description:
  With the current language pack format, it's impossible to translate
  many plurals correctly unless the language uses the same rules as
  English.  We need to let translations specify plurals via a function
  over the number, as described in
  http://www.gnu.org/s/hello/manual/gettext/Plural-forms.html

  The following emails have more detail about how we propose to fix this
  in Mahara:

  ---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
  Subject: Re: Using PluralForms in Mahara strings + DWOO problem/question
  From:    "Richard Mansfield"
  Date:    Tue, September 13, 2011 12:16 pm
  To:      Gregor Anzelj, Francois Marier
  --------------------------------------------------------------------------

  Thanks very much for this Gregor, I've now had time to have a good look
  at those links you sent, and done a bit of playing around on Mahara.

  I'd like to propose that we change Mahara along the lines of this
  commit:

  https://github.com/richardmansfield/richardms-
  mahara/commit/157c384b2860553ab78fad88f7a32b30d4af0ec2

  And the following commit shows how the strings would look in the default
  langpack:

  https://github.com/richardmansfield/richardms-
  mahara/commit/b0aba7671669ab996008a0c65cc11538dc529bda

  It's all pretty much the same as your scheme, but just closer to the
  gettext/PO format, using a php array to store the different plural forms
  rather than special codes inside the string.  So to use your example,
  this string:

  $string['notsosimpleplural'] = "%d
  {{PLURAL:%d|sporocilo|sporocili|sporocila|sporocil}}";

  would be specified like this in the php langpack:

  $string['notsosimpleplural'] = array(
      '%d sporocilo',
      '%d sporocili',
      '%d sporocila',
      '%d sporocil',
  );

  and like this in our PO files:

  #: lang/en.utf8/mahara.php notsosimpleplural
  msgctxt "lang/en.utf8/mahara.php notsosimpleplural"
  msgid "%d message"
  msgid_plural "%d messages"
  msgstr[0] "%d sporocilo"
  msgstr[1] "%d sporocili"
  msgstr[2] "%d sporocila"
  msgstr[3] "%d sporocil"

  Keeping our scheme similar to PO & gettext has the advantage that it'll
  make the conversion of langpacks to/from PO a lot easier, and the other
  advantage is that we won't need to rely on special characters like { and
  | inside the translated strings themselves (these characters could
  legitimately appear in strings too, and one day that might require us to
  dream up some escaping rules).

  The disadvantage I see, compared to your scheme, is that we're removing
  the option to put multiple plural forms anywhere inside a string.  For
  example in the second patch above, I had to split a string up, because
  "Created %s folders and %s files" contains two plurals.  However, I
  don't think PO can deal with that nicely (correct me if I'm wrong on
  that).  If we're expecting people to translate Mahara using standard PO
  editing tools and Launchpad, I don't see that we've got much choice but
  to limit ourselves to one plural per string.

  What do you guys think?

  
  On 29/08/11 19:49, Gregor Anzelj wrote:
  > > Regarding plural forms and gettext/ .po files...
  > >
  > > I think these pages contain all the info needed:
  > >
  > >     * http://www.gnu.org/s/hello/manual/gettext/Plural-forms.html
  > >     *
  http://www.gnu.org/s/hello/manual/gettext/Translating-plural-forms.html#Translating-plural-forms
  > >
  > > But I think we need to be careful to cover all possible cases:
  > >
  > >     * simple one, e.g.: $string['simpleplural'] =
  > >       "{{PLURAL:%d|view|views}}"; as well as
  > >     * not so simple one, e.g.: $string['notsosimpleplural'] = "%d
  > >       {{PLURAL:%d|message|messages}}";
  > >
  > > or in Slovenian:
  > >
  > >     * simple one, e.g.: $string['simpleplural'] =
  > >       "{{PLURAL:%d|pogled|pogleda|pogledi|pogledov}}"; as well as
  > >     * not so simple one, e.g.: $string['notsosimpleplural'] = "%d
  > >       {{PLURAL:%d|sporocilo|sporocili|sporocila|sporocil}}";
  > >
  > > HTH,
  > > Gregor
  > > --
  > > ----------
  > > Gregor Anzelj, prof.
  > > Gimnazija Ledina, Ljubljana

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