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

[Daniel P. Berrange]

On Wed, Feb 20, 2013 at 05:10:54PM +0100, Andreas Färber wrote:
> 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.
> 
> Better would be to use unique alphanumeric identifiers (e.g.,
> "Menu.File.Quit") and to have a regular translation file for en (or
> whatever suitable as fallback).

Your points may be valid, but this patch follows standard practice for
i18n of any GTK app, in fact standard across pretty much all open
source projects I've worked on. I don't think QEMU should try to do
something non-standard for translation files.

Daniel
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