From: Phillip Gawlowski <cmdjackryan@...>
Date: 2011-05-14T06:59:26+09:00
Subject: Re: Any working translation framework available for Ruby

On Fri, May 13, 2011 at 11:11 PM, Michal Suchanek <hramrach@centrum.cz> wrote:
>
> The first problem here is that this is a sentence with parametrized
> verb, and verbs have predetermined location in the sentence different
> across languages. It is at the start in English and at the end in
> Japanese meaning that the parameter order is different when the
> sentence is translated.
>
> In this simple case it would be easy to make two messages, one for
> moving and another for copying but some messages may be quite long and
> use more than two different verbs which would explode the number of
> strings that have to be written, stored and updated considerably.

Well, you'll *have* to create different messages for
copying/moving/deleting. The only thing you can insert dynamically are
non-translatable parameters (number of files, estimated time [and even
that has to be localized]).

> Seriously, I don't expect there is a translation framework that
> handles all of this.

That's because we don't have natural language processing worth a damn yet. ;)

You'll have to brute force the problem: Strings are translated with
place-holders for data.

> But if there is one that can generate sentences that don't read
> completely ridiculous and can be translated into various languages I
> would like to hear about it.

Take a look at https://github.com/svenfuchs/i18n/wiki. Rails uses it,
and from the looks of it, you store translated strings with parameters
in YAML files named after the language(s) you support.

I haven't used it yet, though.

-- 
Phillip Gawlowski

Though the folk I have met,
(Ah, how soon!) they forget
When I've moved on to some other place,
There may be one or two,
When I've played and passed through,
Who'll remember my song or my face.