Op Vrydag 22-06-2007 om 10:23 uur [tijdzone -0500], schreef Shaun McCance: > I've run into a localization issue in formatting DocBook, > and I need some input from translators to decide how best > to solve it. Let's say I have a list of people's names. > There could be any number of people. I need to format > this as inline text. So in English, I'd do: > > Tom and Dick > Tom, Dick, and Harry > Tom, Dick, Harry, and Sally > > The names, of course, don't get translated, but the > commas and "and" should be. So again, this time with > parentheses around the potentially translatable parts: > > Tom( and ) Dick > Tom(, )Dick(, and )Harry > Tom(, )Dick(, )Harry(, and )Sally > > If every language works exactly like English, then I > can just mark three strings for translation: ", ", > " and ", and ", and ". But my guess is that they > aren't all like English. > > So translators, please let me know hows lists of > things are formatted in your language, including > instructions on exceptions (i.e. in English, two > elements are formatted differently than three or > more, as above). > > -- > Shaun >
Hi Shaun The thread is a bit old, but I recently started thinking a bit beyond my mother tongue. I am not a mother tongue speaker of Zulu, but know enough to foresee some problems with what you mention. (*sorry* :-) I can't say whether there is an official rule about the comma, and I have a suspicion that the equivalent for "and" might be used throughout (which compounds the problem I'm about to mention). The issue is with the "and". There is no separate word for "and" in Zulu. The prefix "na-" is joined with the following word, which causes some phonological changes, depending on the noun class of the last "thing". (Noun classes are a bit like genders in some European languages, except Bantu languages often have in the region of 17 of them.) ... and John -> na + uJohn -> noJohn ... and water -> na + amanzi -> namanzi ... and a thing -> na + into -> nento I don't think a programmatic solution will be realistic for this problem. The change that is necessary is perfectly predictable if you have the information (no AI or semantic interpretation necessary), but who will program the rules for each languages where this kind of thing is necessary? Ideally it is the kind of thing that should probably be provided by the locale instead of being programmed in each piece of software. The sad thing is that this seems to work very well for most languages, and will probably be used. If I were the Zulu translator for this, I would simply use a comma for the last "and", but I'm not sure how wrong this will "feel" for a Zulu speaker (especially if it is more natural to just use the "and / na-" between each pair. I guess part of asking a question is being prepared for the answer... ;-) Keep well Friedel _______________________________________________ gnome-i18n mailing list gnome-i18n@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-i18n
