Re: [PATCH] Use plural form in i18n.

[Petr Pisar]

On Wed, Apr 27, 2011 at 10:22:29PM -0600, Bob Proulx wrote:
> Petr Písař wrote:
> > This allows translator to use different wording based on number of
> > bytes.
> > 
> > (I'm not sure if English prescribes "2 bytes allocation", however
> > it's usefull for other languages.)
> 
> In English saying "a 2 bytes allocation" is really odd and would never
> be seen.  It would be "a 2 byte allocation".  The "%d byte" part is a
> modification and description of "allocation".
> 
> For a similar case you might say "a 2 line block of text" but you
> would never say "a 2 lines block of text".  Another would be, it was
> "a 12 meter sailboat", not it was "a 12 meters sailboat".
> 
> I don't know if other languages would benefit from this or not
> however.
> 
I see. I translated the message into Czech as attribute in postposition
(allocation of %d bytes) where the number differentiation applies both in
Czech and English. I can rearticulate the translation back to preposition form
which works the same way as in English despite the fact the preposition form
sounds little odd in Czech. Thus I thought using ngettext() could help in some
languages, especialy in languages where is no posibility to use
number-neutral wording.

So if you think it still matters, just make both string arguments of
ngettext() the same. It will provide correct English and allows translators to
choose number-specific translation.

OTOH it's not a bug for me (Czech) so I'm fine to drop the patch personally.

-- Petr

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