From: Jonathan Nieder Date: Tue, 21 Jun 2011 19:32:17 GMT Subject: Re: [PATCH 04/13] revert: Propogate errors upwards from do_pick_commit Message-ID: <20110621193217.GA17390@elie> In-Reply-To: <7viprz8018.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org> Jun 21, 2011 at 12:19:47PM -0700, Junio C Hamano wrote: > Jonathan Nieder writes: >>> + if (res < 0) >>> + die(_("%s failed"), me); >>> + return 0; >> >> Should the "revert" or "cherry-pick" here be part of the message >> marked for translation? A translator might want to paraphrase to >> >> fatal: failed to cherry-pick >> >> if that is more natural in the language at hand. > > Wouldn't such a message file simply say > > msgid "%s failed" > msgstr "failed to %s" > > IOW, I am not sure what problem you are seeing. Ah, sorry for the lack of clarity. What I meant is that the noun and verb will be different words in many languages. There can also be problems of subject/verb agreement. Also "me" is used elsewhere to hold the command name as typed on the command line even when LANG points to a language other than English if I remember correctly. If the message were in revert_or_cherry_pick instead of having two identical copies in cmd_revert and cmd_cherry_pick, it would have been less striking (but still a potential problem).