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List:       kde-i18n-doc
Subject:    Re: Please discuss: Translation of types and properties in Nepomuk
From:       Chusslove Illich <caslav.ilic () gmx ! net>
Date:       2008-10-09 11:48:40
Message-ID: 200810091348.44053.caslav.ilic () gmx ! net
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> [: Sebastian Trüg :]
> With Nepomuk come a bunch of ontologies, sets of types and properties that
> define and relate resources of any kind. This introduces a big translation
> issue. [...] The system would work a bit different than the "normal"
> translations as applications would not use stuff like "%1 is mentioned in
> %2" but get exactly that from Nepomuk, i.e. the property object.

(I know next to nothing about Nepomuk, either concept or workings, so sorry
about any strange questions.)

Before going into grammar details -- indeed, perhaps to prevent going into
such details -- I'd ask what is supposed to build these strings, in their
final form? E.g. the user sees, somewhere, "Nepomuk is mentioned in
Articles": which code did put the words "Nepomuk" and "Articles" in "%1 are
mentioned in %2"? Is it KDE code? Does it go through a KDE i18n call? If
not, can it be made to go through an i18n call? Similarly for the "Nepomuk"
and "Articles" themselves, can they be pulled through an i18n call (either
as i18nc("...", "Nepomuk") or I18N_NOOP2("...", "Nepomuk"), or even
extracted from XML or another format, the way .ui, .rc, etc. files are)?

For example, the answer to all these questions would be "no" if we would be
speaking about .desktop files, as they are both "static" (no placeholder
substitutions), and need to be read by non-KDE code too.

> [...] After all, we never really know if the friend we are talking about
> is male or female.

If KDE code is building the final strings, could we know this, in principle?
Assuming, of course, that the user/something did provide gender info, and
"ontologies" sound to me like something that may be able to carry such info.
More precisely, at the very point when i18nc("...", "%1 is a friend") hits,
would there be a call available to fetch the gender (or appropriate
"undefined" value if not available) of whatever %1 is?

> Which do we need? Which are useless? Which are missing?

The problem is that there is no end to what is needed to cover "all"
languages, and if collected, then much of it would be useless to any given
language.

On the other hand, if the answers to all the above questions could-questions
would be "yes", then I would say -- we need nothing, just think about and
hardcode for reasonable English, with ample contexts (and as usual, with
plural i18n calls where these are due, and no split sentences).

-- 
Chusslove Illich (Часлав Илић)
Serbian KDE translation team

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