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

[Andreas Färber]

Am 21.02.2013 09:38, schrieb 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.

I agree that a mix of English and German is bad.

Unfortunately that is exactly what I see on my German system now
*despite* translation support (v5) being committed!

Andreas

> 
> 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
> 


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