Re: [PATCH 1/5] diff: move TRANSLATORS comments so they're picked up

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Apr 30, 2012, 17:30 UTC
Message-ID: <7v8vhdgma7.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <1335799995-7667-2-git-send-email-avarab@gmail.com>

Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason  <avarab@gmail.com> writes:

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> These TRANSLATORS comments weren't actually picked up by xgettext, the
> comment needs to be right before the Q_() function call, evidently it
> isn't picked up if that call is wrapped in another function call.
>
> Signed-off-by: Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason <avarab@gmail.com>

The patch makes sense as an advice to people who update sources where to place the "TRANSLATORS:" comment, but I am unsure about what this particular one says. Are we assuming that translators do not know what the sentence they are translating refers to?

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>  		strbuf_addf(&sb,
> +			    /*
> +			     * TRANSLATORS: "+" in (+) is a line addition marker;
> +			     * do not translate it.
> +			     */
>  			    Q_(", %d insertion(+)", ", %d insertions(+)",
>  			       insertions),

What I am getting at is that this may be simply being unnecessarily noisy by trying to be helpful, and I am not sure if you are drawing the line at the right level. For example, "insertion" has many meanings and in the context of this sentence it means lines added to the old material---should we mention that here, and tell translators to use the word that conveys that particular meaning?

For this particular one, I'd be happier if the TRANSLATORS comment told them to check if "diffstat" (which we borrowed this from) has a l10n of this message for the language they are translating to, and make sure they use the same format here.