On 7/25/06, Abel Cheung <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On 7/18/06, Christian Rose <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Behdad, this is about http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=347110 > > -- it was only recently that I discovered that you have included a > > section about markup to http://live.gnome.org/GnomeI18nDeveloperTips : > > > > "Following is a list of examples that need to be marked for > > translation, but were not in some cases: > > [...] > > '<b>%s</b>': That is an innocent way to mark something to make it > > boldface in the interface, to emphasize importance or make it a > > header. But not every language has a concept of modern boldface > > typefaces, or even if it has such fonts, they may not be the preferred > > font for such kind of emphasis." > > > > So are you suggesting that developers include the surrounding markup > > in the translateable message, in case you may need to change it for > > Persian for rendering purposes? > > My guess is that they are just reluctant to changing anything > not visually beneficial, not that they have already foreseen > the problem. But to make an excuse, this is a good > one, especially when what Behdad said is valid. I have been > bitten by this kind of markup/font issues myself. > > Due to absense of freely available boldface Chinese font, I > have seen somebody translate things like: > > msgid "<b>%s</b>" > msgstr "<i>%s</i>" > > in order to distinguish it from normal text. > > Of course in most cases the proper 'fix' is to have a boldtype > font. But creating a boldface font is not always that easy, > when one is talking about complex scripts that consists of > at least hundreds or thousands of glyphs; and it needs quite > some human horsepower as well, which may not be available for > newly available languages in F/OSS world.
I understand that problem, but I for sure don't agree that this is the proper way to fix it, as this hack, that is, gratiously including surrounding markup inside the translateable message content, causes a lot of problems for all translators. As a translator you want to translate the *content*, not the surrounding presentation. I don't care whether the words will be written on a billboard, a folder, or on-screen, the words will be the same. As Clytie explained: > I support you. Not only is it a problem, one more thing that can > break, but it's one more difference preventing exact matches using > msgmerge. > > I spend way too much time changing fuzzy strings like this: > > ,fuzzy > msgid "<b>Preferences</b>" > msgstr "Tùy thích" > > to > > msgid "<b>Preferences</b>" > msgstr "<b>Tùy thích</b>" > > simply adding, modifying or removing formatting to match the original > string. The actual text is fine. > > I really don't see it as our job to adjust formatting. I would indeed > prefer to concentrate on the actual translation. Here are some ways to solve the problem of bad rendering: 1) Fix the fonts. Agreed, not an easy task. 2) Solve the problem at the Pango level. Instead of encouraging the use of <b> and <i> tags, add abstract <strong>, <em> tags/attributes or some such, allowing for different interpretations for different scripts. If we know that boldface fonts for Persian always suck, <strong> can have a different representation for Persian script. Then the HIG and other such specifications can specify these attributes instead of a particular font style. And here's how to solve the (ab)use of using surrounding PangoMarkup inside translateable messages: 3) Make gtk+/Pango have support for *attributes* instead of forcing everyone to use PangoMarkup. If I want a label to be bold, italic, smaller, or larger, I as a developer should be able to simply set attributes to that effect. Right now, it's too common to see something like this: msgid "<span size=\"xx-large\">Bug Buddy</span>" msgstr "<span size=\"xx-large\">Bug Buddy</span>" msgid "<span weight=\"bold\">Date & Time</span>" msgstr "<span weight=\"bold\">Datum och tid</span>" msgid "<b>Date & Time</b>" msgstr "<b>Datum och tid</b>" msgid "<span size=\"medium\"><b>No file</b></span>" msgstr "<span size=\"medium\"><b>Ingen fil</b></span>" msgid "No file" msgstr "Ingen fil" Often, you will have duplicated messages in the same file, just with different markup! If gtk+/Pango and libglade would make it possible for application writers to set *attributes* for these things instead of having to resort to PangoMarkup, all problems would be solved. Christian _______________________________________________ gnome-i18n mailing list gnome-i18n@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-i18n
