[Kstars-devel] Re: questions on city translations

[heiko.evermann at gmx.de]

Hi Harris,
> (2) In bug report 94741 (http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=94741), the
> reporter requests that a distinction be made in the i18n() strings for
> cities which share the same name, but in different countries.  For
> example, "Paris, France" and "Paris, Illinois, USA".
>
> The argument is that the former should be translated, but the latter
> should be left as the English "Paris".  Do most of you agree that this
> distinction needs to be made?
I think that this distinction should be made. There are two different ways for 
this:
1) "Paris, France" 
2) I18N-Comment "City in France" , "Paris". Instead of I18n("city name, 
probably does not have to be translated", "Paris")
I would prefer the second way. In 1) is much more difficult for the 
translators. Often the city name will not have to be translated, but 
countries frequently have to be translated.
Example: for German I would have to translate
Russia=>Russland
but I would not translate most of the cities.
But for "St. Petersburg, Russia" I would have to write "St. Petersburg, 
Russland".

By the way: such a change would solve a second problem: As a translator I 
1) would like to see the country of the city
2) would like to have the cities ordered by country.
Reason: for most cities from far, far away we will not have translations in 
German or in Low Saxon. I would expect to be able to copy e.g. all Brasilian 
towns directly, which is very quick in KBabel. But when it comes to cities, 
e.g. from the Netherlands, I must be careful. For some we do have a German 
name. So I would like to see the country to know whether or not I have to be 
careful. And when that is ordered by country, it is even quicker. All the 
city names in kstars.po are a lot of work.

> However, this will introduce 2500 fuzzy strings in kstars.pot!  Seems
> like my i18n issues always come up right before the freeze :(.  Should
> I wait until after 3.4, or go ahead and do it now?
Well, I would consider working through 2500 fuzzy strings about one month 
before close to be VERY annoying. I guess that many teams already have enough 
trouble preparing for 3.4. Please do not do place that extra burden on the 
translators before 3.4.

Kind regards,

Heiko Evermann