on., 29.07.2009 kl. 23.01 +0300, skrev Roman Kyrylych:
Hi!
During my translation of pacman/libalpm files I've noticed a significant number of inconsistencies and messages that are difficult to translate to a language that is quite different from Western European languages without knowing in what context they are used and what kind of text can hide behind %s. (e.g. what "Held by %s" is supposed to mean? if translated directly to my language without specifying a type of %s object the meaning will be confusing).
To all pacman committers: _please_ use consistent and descriptive text. I am sure that some messages could be made more specific, not only simplifying the work of translators, but also understanding by users.
In addition, it would be easier for translators if some native English speaker could check .pot files before string freeze. It seems to me that there may be some duplicates removed, and alot of related messages made more consistent.
I understand that text cosmetics is not a top priority when developing some new feature, but doing some text cleanup before string freeze (while keeping in mind that every single line of text may and will be translated to a (very) different language, _and_ trying to make the text look clear for most users) does worth some time spent. I can do such work for next pacman releases (not sure if I can "generate" good English messages since it's not my native language, but at least I can point to a text that's not clear to understand/translate etc.)
I know it's too late to make such changes now, but I hope this can be done for future pacman releases.
Agree. I have done some unofficial translation on Pacman 3.2.2 to Norwegian Bokmal, mostly for fun. While a translation seems fine in my editor (Poedit), I have to rewrite approximately 80% of the messages when I see them in a real-life context, using Pacman. this is the main reason I have not submitted a translation yet, because I have a lot of messages I have NOT seen in my day to day use, and I dare not guarantee their consistency and clarity. Dag E. Tangen