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| -rw-r--r-- | doc/translation_strings_policy.md | 38 |
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diff --git a/doc/translation_strings_policy.md b/doc/translation_strings_policy.md index 6824b1d8ef..cf72a55b20 100644 --- a/doc/translation_strings_policy.md +++ b/doc/translation_strings_policy.md @@ -64,6 +64,44 @@ Avoid dividing up a message into fragments. Translators see every string separat There have been difficulties with use of HTML in translation strings; translators should not be able to accidentally affect the formatting of messages. This may sometimes be at conflict with the recommendation in the previous section. +### Plurals + +Plurals can be complex in some languages. A quote from the gettext documentation: + + In Polish we use e.g. plik (file) this way: + 1 plik, + 2,3,4 pliki, + 5-21 pliko'w, + 22-24 pliki, + 25-31 pliko'w + and so on + +In Qt code use tr's third argument for optional plurality. For example: + + tr("%n hour(s)","",secs/HOUR_IN_SECONDS); + tr("%n day(s)","",secs/DAY_IN_SECONDS); + tr("%n week(s)","",secs/WEEK_IN_SECONDS); + +This adds `<numerusform>`s to the respective `.ts` file, which can be translated separately depending on the language. In English, this is simply: + + <message numerus="yes"> + <source>%n active connection(s) to Bitcoin network</source> + <translation> + <numerusform>%n active connection to Bitcoin network</numerusform> + <numerusform>%n active connections to Bitcoin network</numerusform> + </translation> + </message> + +Where it is possible try to avoid embedding numbers into the flow of the string at all. e.g. + + WARNING: check your network connection, %d blocks received in the last %d hours (%d expected) + +versus + + WARNING: check your network connection, less blocks (%d) were received in the last %n hours than expected (%d). + +The second example reduces the number of pluralized words that translators have to handle from three to one, at no cost to comprehensibility of the sentence. + ### String freezes During a string freeze (often before a major release), no translation strings are to be added, modified or removed. |