Thread: [Audacity-translation] Some comments on source text
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From: F W. <fr...@tr...> - 2007-10-27 21:23:35
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Hi list I've finally found some time to start looking at translations for the upcoming version. I have some questions about the English source text that I'd appreciate some comments on. Thanks Friedel (Afrikaans Audacity translator) " Duration: " What are the spaces for? Is it for right alignment? If so, can't the alignment be done in the code? "Waiting to start recording at " Surely there must be a variable in there or something? "Album:" and "Album" "Artist:" and "Artist" Are both forms definitely necessary? "Normalize by Dominic Mazzoni\n" Why the \n? "-" (effects/Normalize.cpp:357) "%s: %s" effects/vamp/LoadVamp.cpp:53 effects/vamp/VampEffect.cpp:238 Any idea what these are for? "Program" Noun or verb? effects/vamp/VampEffect.cpp:446 "Successfully exported %d file(s)." "Something went wrong after exporting %d file(s)." Why don't we use gettext plurals? "Error (file may not have been written): %hs" I've never encountered this. What does the %hs mean? " is an audio CD track. \n Audacity cannot open audio CDs directly. \n Extract (rip) the CD tracks to an audio format that \n Audacity can import, such as WAV or AIFF." Some messages like this one seems to be constructed. Shouldn't it be done with a variable? I also encountered the issues in HelpText.cpp, which I'll mention in the thread from earlier this week. |
From: Richard A. <ri...@au...> - 2007-10-28 16:33:48
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On Sat, 2007-10-27 at 23:25 +0200, F Wolff wrote: > " Duration: " > What are the spaces for? Is it for right alignment? If so, can't the > alignment be done in the code? No good reason. I've replaced with tabs, and taken them out of the translated string. > > "Waiting to start recording at " > Surely there must be a variable in there or something? As it was, the time and date (something like "Sunday 28th October 2007 15:16:17 GMT" but hopefully translated by wxwidgets) got appended on the end. This is obviously going to be a problem for languages where the word order is different, so I've re-done it to have a %s where the time will go and added a hint. > > "Album:" and "Album" > "Artist:" and "Artist" > > Are both forms definitely necessary? No. The versions with colons don't get used anywhere visible as it stands at the moment - they seem to be left-over from some experimental code. They could be fixed, but I don't really intend to unless there is a way of using them, as they will otherwise just get deleted. > "Normalize by Dominic Mazzoni\n" > > Why the \n? To be obvious, it's a line break. Why is there one on the end of that string? No good reason I can see, so now there isn't. > "-" > (effects/Normalize.cpp:357) It's a minus sign, i.e. put in front of a number to indicate it's less than 0. I'm fairly sure this is a bad way to do what it's doing, which is indicating that normalisation levels in dB are always negative. > "%s: %s" > effects/vamp/LoadVamp.cpp:53 effects/vamp/VampEffect.cpp:238 It's a formatting string to concacenate two strings together with a space. Seeing as the strings aren't translated (they come at run-time from the plug-in) I've just made the format untranslatable as well. > "Program" > Noun or verb? > effects/vamp/VampEffect.cpp:446 I'm not sure - I can't get VAMP effects to work at the moment, and there are no comments in the code to explain what is (or isn't) going on. > "Successfully exported %d file(s)." > "Something went wrong after exporting %d file(s)." > > Why don't we use gettext plurals? Pardon? I take it this is some sort of automation I haven't met yet. > "Error (file may not have been written): %hs" > I've never encountered this. What does the %hs mean? I think it's a bug, because h as a precision is only valid for integers, and it's a string conversion. Changed to normal %s. > " is an audio CD track. \n > Audacity cannot open audio CDs directly. \n > Extract (rip) the CD tracks to an audio format that \n > Audacity can import, such as WAV or AIFF." > > Some messages like this one seems to be constructed. Shouldn't it be > done with a variable? Yes. Changed a bunch, let me know if there are more to do. Richard |
From: F W. <fr...@tr...> - 2007-10-29 08:02:17
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Hi Richard Thanks for the comments and the improvements. Some comments below. Op Sondag 2007-10-28 skryf Richard Ash: > On Sat, 2007-10-27 at 23:25 +0200, F Wolff wrote: ... > > > > "Waiting to start recording at " > > Surely there must be a variable in there or something? > As it was, the time and date (something like "Sunday 28th October 2007 > 15:16:17 GMT" but hopefully translated by wxwidgets) got appended on the > end. This is obviously going to be a problem for languages where the > word order is different, so I've re-done it to have a %s where the time > will go and added a hint. Which reminds me: in the About dialogue I saw the build date not being localised. I'm running the Windows version under Wine, however, so that might explain it. But I thought I'll mention it anyway. ... > > "-" > > (effects/Normalize.cpp:357) > It's a minus sign, i.e. put in front of a number to indicate it's less > than 0. I'm fairly sure this is a bad way to do what it's doing, which > is indicating that normalisation levels in dB are always negative. I think this can be done by number formatting, but not sure. I think one issue that might come up is that some languages don't prefix the symbol, but might put it at the back or do something entirely different (using brackets?). There should be a locale aware number formatting function somewhere. This also takes care of formatting issues like the decimal separator and thousands grouping. > > > "%s: %s" > > effects/vamp/LoadVamp.cpp:53 effects/vamp/VampEffect.cpp:238 > It's a formatting string to concacenate two strings together with a > space. Seeing as the strings aren't translated (they come at run-time > from the plug-in) I've just made the format untranslatable as well. > Ok, so what are the going to be like? I don't think I'm going to change the string if I don't have an idea of what they will represent. I guess it is only for languages with different conventions of punctuation. Is it perhaps possible to add a localisation hint to the source? ... > > "Successfully exported %d file(s)." > > "Something went wrong after exporting %d file(s)." > > > > Why don't we use gettext plurals? > Pardon? I take it this is some sort of automation I haven't met yet. It allows for localisations to select the proper translation based on the number in the variable (%d). Some languages have more interesting requirements for dealing with singular/plural issues. This page in the gettext manual explains it quite well, I think: http://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/manual/html_node/Plural-forms.html > > " is an audio CD track. \n > > Audacity cannot open audio CDs directly. \n > > Extract (rip) the CD tracks to an audio format that \n > > Audacity can import, such as WAV or AIFF." > > > > Some messages like this one seems to be constructed. Shouldn't it be > > done with a variable? > Yes. Changed a bunch, let me know if there are more to do. > > Richard > Thanks a lot for your comments. I think I might only get round to this again next weekend. Keep well Friedel |