Subject: Re: [PATCH] Collocate strings to simplify translation

From: Vincent van Ravesteijn <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 24 May 2012 14:34:01 +0200

Op 24-5-2012 14:20, Johannes Sixt schreef:
> Am 5/24/2012 11:55, schrieb Vincent van Ravesteijn:
>> Op 24-5-2012 10:32, Zbigniew Jędrzejewski-Szmek schreef:
>>> On 05/24/2012 09:41 AM, Vincent van Ravesteijn wrote:
>>>> -    status_printf_ln(s, c, _("%s files:"), what);
>>>> +    status_printf_ln(s, c, _("%s:"), what);
>>> How can "%s:" be translated? _() should be removed here.
>> Some languages might use a character different from ':'. For example,
>> Chinese uses a full-width character ':' (unicode 0xFF1A) instead of a
>> half-width character. Maybe this is taken care of by the system/shell or
>> whatever, maybe not. Other examples are languages that read from right to
>> left. I guess it should then be translated by ":%s".
>>
>> This will probably be a matter of convention.
> Shouldn't you then move the colon with the "files"? That is, here we have:
>
> -	status_printf_ln(s, c, _("%s files:"), what);
> +	status_printf_ln(s, c, "%s", what);
>
> and elsewhere we use _("Untracked files:") and _("Ignored files:").

I would avoid having too many 'decorations' in the strings themselves, 
because it is annoying to have to translate "Untracked files", 
"untracked files", "untracked files:", "  (untracked files)" etc.

Besides, the translation of "%s:" can be reused numerous times.

Just my opinion.

Vincent