[Nagiosplug-devel] Re: Translations and gettext

[Yves Mettier]

Hi :)

> Message: 2
> Cc: nagiosplug-devel at lists.sourceforge.net
> From: Ton Voon <tonvoon at mac.com>
> Subject: Re: [Nagiosplug-devel] Translations and gettext
> Date: Sat, 20 Nov 2004 07:15:05 +0000
> To: ymettier at perfparse.org
>
>>> 3. Scripts aren't translated, so the usefulness is somewhat crippled.
>>
>> True, but there was demand for translated output and I think that a
>> translational ability is overall A Good Thing.
>>
>
> I would rather have conformity. I wouldn't want some checks to output
> english and some others to output swedish. Besides, the target audience
> (network admins) are usually required to speak english to do their job
> anyway.

When you have 1 or 2 languages, you can consider doing checks with the other languages.
But when you have 10 or 20 other languages, forget about the tests, and let the
translators and users do the tests.

If the code is clean, there should be no problem with translations. By clean, I have a
special thought to buffers with limited size :
char str[15];
snprintf(str, 15, _("Some content"));
This should be avoided since the translation can be longer.
Here, the program should not crash (notice the use of snprintf instead of sprintf). But
the translation should not fit : "Un contenu quelconque" in French is longer :)

Besides this, that the translator can notice and ask for a change in the code, there
should be no problem.


> --__--__--
>
> Message: 4
> Cc: nagiosplug-devel at lists.sourceforge.net
> From: Ton Voon <tonvoon at mac.com>
> Subject: Re: [Nagiosplug-devel] Translations and gettext
> Date: Sat, 20 Nov 2004 16:56:38 +0000
> To: Andreas Ericsson <ae at op5.se>


>> I would rather have conformity. I wouldn't want some checks to output
>> english and some others to output swedish. Besides, the target
>> audience (network admins) are usually required to speak english to do
>> their job anyway.

Target audience : in short companies, yes. In bigger, definitely not.

Some big companies can have a service for installation of the software (nagios,
plugins...) with good sysadmins who speak their language and very good English.
And they can have another service, who just watch the nagios user interface, and when
it's red, read the message and call the service who can solve the problem if they cannot
do it themselves.
That audience is the one that really use the tool, read the messages from the plugins.
Those guys, at least in France, are usually not good in English.


> --__--__--
>
> Message: 5
> Cc: NagiosPlug Devel <nagiosplug-devel at lists.sourceforge.net>
> From: Ton Voon <tonvoon at mac.com>
> Subject: Re: [Nagiosplug-devel] Announcement regarding nagiosplug 1.4 release
> Date: Sat, 20 Nov 2004 17:04:14 +0000
> To: Benoit Mortier <benoit.mortier at opensides.be>
>
> Benoit,
>
> Thank you for your offer of helping. I will look into giving you CVS=20
> access for the translational files, but unfortunately I do not fully=20
> understand how it works at the moment. Do you just need access to=20
> update the po/*.po files?

I let Benoit give his own answer.
But when somebody offers to translate one of my projects, I make a change myself in
configure.ac (update the line ALL_LINGUAS with the new language), generate a new file
po/LL.po (replace LL with the language abbreviation), test if everything successfully
compiles with the new language, and when OK, the person who wish to help with the
translation only have to edit po/LL.po.

I use ALL_LINGUAS in configure.ac. There is another way to do it : have a file
po/LINGUAS where you put all the translated languages.

Well, if you need help on the programmer's side or on the maintainer's side for C
plugins or autotools, I can have a look. I can also translate few strings in French if
needed, but I'm very bad in translations, that's why I let Benoit do the job for French
:)

> Also, as we are only just starting to populate more of the=20
> translations, please let us know if there is anything that the=20
> developers can help with (eg, reusing similar messages, duplication of=20=
> messsages, etc).

You should not have problems with duplication of messages : gettext do the job for you.
For reusing similar messages, have a look here :
http://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/manual/html_chapter/gettext_6.html#SEC54
I have never played with that. I cannot help more on translation :)

I found 2 interesting URLS if you have time to have a look :
GNU Translation Project (with a link to "equipe francaise")
http://www2.iro.umontreal.ca/~gnutra/po/HTML/

Translation HOWTO (for the Gnucash project)... can easily be adapted to any project :
http://www.gnucash.org/trans/TRANSLATION_HOWTO

Yves

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