Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH 7/9] gtk: add translation support (v5)

[Kevin Wolf]

On Wed, Feb 20, 2013 at 06:26:55PM +0100, Andreas Färber wrote:
> Am 20.02.2013 18:05, schrieb Anthony Liguori:
> > Andreas Färber <address@hidden> writes:
> > 
> >> Am 20.02.2013 14:43, schrieb Anthony Liguori:
> >>> This includes a de_DE translation from Kevin Wolf and an it translation 
> >>> from
> >>> Paolo Bonzini.
> >>>
> >>> Cc: Paolo Bonzini <address@hidden>
> >>> Cc: Kevin Wolf <address@hidden>
> >>> Cc: Stefan Hajnoczi <address@hidden>
> >>> Signed-off-by: Anthony Liguori <address@hidden>
> >>> ---
> >>> v1 -> v4
> >>>  - Don't use '|| exit 1' with sub-invocation of make
> >>>  - Actually include Kevin's translation
> >>> v4 -> v5
> >>>  - Update translations (Kevin and Paolo)
> >>>  - Fix 'make update' for it.po
> >>> ---
> >>>  Makefile       |  3 +++
> >>>  configure      |  4 +++-
> >>>  po/Makefile    | 46 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
> >>>  po/de_DE.po    | 45 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
> >>>  po/it.po       | 45 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
> >>>  po/messages.po | 45 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
> >>>  ui/gtk.c       | 22 +++++++++++++++-------
> >>>  7 files changed, 202 insertions(+), 8 deletions(-)
> >>>  create mode 100644 po/Makefile
> >>>  create mode 100644 po/de_DE.po
> >>>  create mode 100644 po/it.po
> >>>  create mode 100644 po/messages.po
> >>
> >> IIUC this uses the English texts as key for lookup of translations.
> >> Experience shows that while that is most convenient for the English it
> >> leads to grammatical mistakes in other languages due to text reuse in
> >> wrong contexts. A prominent example is "Server" being translated as
> >> "Kellner" (which is waiter) in some early Windows NT version. :) More
> >> recent examples commonly found are ambiguities of, e.g., "Update" as
> >> noun vs. imperative - happens if the same wording is used in a menu and
> >> in some options dialog or status text. Similar for ing-forms translated
> >> as noun vs. infinitive vs. first-person present.
> > 
> > Right or wrong, this is how GTK apps are written.  If you disagree with
> > it, take it up with the Gnome folks.  Consistency trumps "rightness"
> > here.
> 
> You don't translate error_setg() et al., so translating a few UI items
> is in fact inconsistent here.

I think the plan with error messages was to have them translated
eventually, which is one of the reasons why clients may not parse them
(and strerror() results are already translated today).

But since we're using some standard GTK menu entries, not translating
would actually give you the much bigger inconsistency: In the same menu,
you would have both English and translated entries. This is what the
first version of this patch series had, and which I really hated.

As long as there is a logical separation between translated and
untranslated strings (e.g. menus are translated, the monitor is English)
I don't see a problem with it.

> A more critical issue would be distro packaging though.
> An alternative idea would be to separate the _L() text from the English
> text if that is possible through some macro, cmp. reply to Daniel.

You want qemu to be usable with LANG=C, so using identifiers instead of
English texts doesn't really work. The gettext functions that allow
specifying a context look like a better solution to solve the problem
if it ever comes up.

Kevin