On Sat, Mar 12, 2011 at 10:26 AM, Jacob Nevins
<[email protected]> wrote:
> Klemen Košir writes:
>> On 12.3.2011 7:09, Jason Dorje Short wrote:
>>> The first question though, is can it be fixed in the translation
>>> directly using different grammar?  "Slovenians give you city of
>>> London" or "City of London, owned by the Slovenians, given to you."
>>
>> "Slovenians" and "London" are actually variables in these sentences, and
>> as far as I know, I can't change variable order, so the first sentence
>> would be displayed as "London give you the city of Slovenians".
>
> You can change variable order in a localization, as described in
> <http://freeciv.wikia.com/wiki/Localization#How_to_change_the_order_of_arguments>:
> "%2$s give you the city of %1$s."

Yeah, you can put the sentence in absolutely any order you want.  That
still doesn't answer whether any of those orders would be considered
proper Slovenian grammar though!  Sounds like it's at least hopeful
however.

In the past we've made significant progress at complex localization
issues only when a native speaker of one such "complex" language is
also a developer.  To make the changes you'd originally described in
the code is possible but it's hard for me to wrap my mind around all
that is needed.  It's not simply enough to separate the nation-plural
form into two (or three?) different forms, I am assuming.  And even
doing that little, means a lot of extra translation strings added for
every other translator.

Still, I'd like to see any more examples of where you find you can't
translate with good grammar.

-jason

_______________________________________________
Freeciv-i18n mailing list
[email protected]
https://mail.gna.org/listinfo/freeciv-i18n

Reply via email to