I'd like an in-depth discussion here of the current issue at:
(PR#40032) server/plrhand.c civil war message plural
A fairly drastic shortening of the message (currently missing the plural) is
proposed. But Egor says that it would be better to eliminate the adjectival
form of nations entirely, because of Russian "case" and "gender" issues.
His alternative is nation_plural_adjective(). That would be a lot of work,
(order n**2), but certainly possible. I'd be more receptive with near
universal support for the idea by other translators.
It's certainly possible to eliminate the adjective in some cases. But that
makes messages more stilted. OTOH, the messages are already cursory.
For example, "Polish rebels" could replaced with "rebel Poles" (awkward) and
"Insurgent Poles" (done, at the beginning of a sentence).
But as subjects are added, it's not so easy. "The Danish nation partitions"
cannot be replaced with "The Danes partition" because that's semantically
incorrect.... It really is the nation that splits.
And elsewhere, "the Polish Musketeers" would have to be "the Musketeers of
Poles" (not good in English)!
===
Please discuss my proposed shorter messages (the latter with plural):
notify_player(pplayer, NULL, E_CIVIL_WAR,
_("Your nation is thrust into civil war."));
notify_player(pplayer, NULL, E_FIRST_CONTACT,
/* TRANS: <leader> ... the Polish rebels. */
_("%s is the leader of the %s rebels."),
player_name(cplayer),
nation_adjective_for_player(cplayer));
notify_player(pplayer, pcity->tile, E_CITY_LOST,
/* TRANS: <city> ... the Poles. */
_("%s declares allegiance to the %s."),
city_name(pcity),
nation_plural_for_player(cplayer));
notify_player(NULL, NULL, E_CIVIL_WAR,
/* TRANS: The Danish ... Poles ... <7> cities. */
PL_("The %s nation partitions after civil war."
" Insurgent %s now hold %d city.",
"The %s nation partitions after civil war."
" Insurgent %s now hold %d cities.",
i),
nation_adjective_for_player(pplayer),
nation_plural_for_player(cplayer),
i);
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