From: Bruno Haible Date: Mon, 23 Jun 2003 10:05:28 +0000 (+0000) Subject: Explain why entire sentences. X-Git-Tag: v0.13~412 X-Git-Url: http://git.ipfire.org/?a=commitdiff_plain;h=a74c79af92f92f6c54f890c13434acb26e4c5a80;p=thirdparty%2Fgettext.git Explain why entire sentences. --- diff --git a/gettext-tools/doc/ChangeLog b/gettext-tools/doc/ChangeLog index 7fc161868..700fa858f 100644 --- a/gettext-tools/doc/ChangeLog +++ b/gettext-tools/doc/ChangeLog @@ -1,3 +1,7 @@ +2003-06-22 Bruno Haible + + * gettext.texi (Preparing Strings): More explanations. + 2003-06-21 Guido Flohr Bruno Haible diff --git a/gettext-tools/doc/gettext.texi b/gettext-tools/doc/gettext.texi index 2b63384fd..adae9f071 100644 --- a/gettext-tools/doc/gettext.texi +++ b/gettext-tools/doc/gettext.texi @@ -1900,6 +1900,15 @@ also be able to find the appropriate grammatical construction. The French translator for example translates "write protected" like "protected against writing". +Entire sentences are also important because in many languages, the +declination of some word in a sentence depends on the gender or the +number (singular/plural) of another part of the sentence. There are +usually more interdependencies between words than in English. The +consequence is that asking a translator to translate two half-sentences +and then combining these two half-sentences through dumb string concatenation +will not work, for many languages, even though it would work for English. +That's why translators need to handle entire sentences. + Often sentences don't fit into a single line. If a sentence is output using two subsequent @code{printf} statements, like this