From: Josef 'Jupp' Schugt <jupp@...>
Date: 2003-06-30T04:30:18+09:00
Subject: Re: Message catalogs (I18N) overnight hack

Saluton!

* Hal E. Fulton; 2003-06-28, 23:03 UTC:
>     puts "Hello, world!"
>     Hallo, Welt!

OK

>     puts "Hello, Tom!"
>     Hallo, Tom!

OK

>     puts "User adam has opened file garden.eden already."
>     Datei garden.eden wird schon geoeffnet von adam.

Datei garden.eden wurde schon von Benutzer adam geoeffnet.

>     puts "User foo has opened file bar already."
>     Datei bar wird schon geoeffnet von foo.

Datei bar wurde schon von Benutzer foo geoeffnet.

>     printf "User %s has opened file %s already.\n", "eve", "apple"
>     Datei apple wird schon geoeffnet von eve.

Datei apple wurde schon von Benutzer eve geoeffnet.

>     puts "Douglas Adams says that 'the meaning of life' is 42."
>     Douglas Adams hat gesagt, dass 'the meaning of life' '42' ist.

Okay - besides that it is the meaning of life, the universe, and all 
that >;->


>     puts "This %1 symbol will be ignored."
>     This %1 symbol will be ignored.

Dieses %1-Symbol wird ignoriert.

If the above is to be correct German the Bindestrich *has* to be 
present (although that is changing these days).

>     printf "The cost of %s is $%5.2f.\n", "this item", 49.95
>     $49.95 ist der Preis von 'this item'.

Where do the apostrophes come from? Cost is Kosten, not Preis (that's 
price). German has a parallel way ofr formulating the above:

Die Kosten von this item betragen $49,95.

FYI: The recently mentioned DECIMAL POINT IS COMMA statement of COBOL 
reflects a difference between German and US way of writing numbers

US: 100,000,000.00
DE: 100.000.000,00

Precisely the other way round.

Note that I did *not* correct ae/oe/ue/ss. In the case of 'ss': 
Presently both pre or post Rechtschreibreform spelling are correct. 
In the other cases: I suppose you know how to correctly spell these 
words >;->

Technical side: According to me redefining 'print' is an unacceptable
violation of the principle of least surprise. The command reads 
'print' as in 'print that book' not as in 'publish a translation of 
that book'.

What about this?

String.locale('C', 'de_DE')
puts 'Alternatives exist'.l10n

First argument of String.locale is language strings are expected to 
be in ('C' is default), second is target language).

Gis,

Josef 'Jupp' Schugt