Re: [PATCH] submodule: avoid sentence-lego in translated string

> On Mon, Oct 9, 2017 at 9:51 AM, brian m. carlson
> <sandals@crustytoothpaste.net> wrote:
>> On Sun, Oct 08, 2017 at 10:32:35AM +0100, Philip Oakley wrote:
>>> From: "Martin Ågren" <martin.agren@gmail.com>
>>> > - die(_("submodule entry '%s' (%s) is a %s, not a commit"),
>>> > -     cb->path, oid_to_hex(oid), typename(type));
>>> > + die(_("submodule entry '%s' (%s) is not a commit"),
>>> > +     cb->path, oid_to_hex(oid));
>>> Bikeshed,
>>> maybe:
>>> "submodule entry '%s' (%s) is not a commit. It is a %s"
>>> This puts the two parts in separate sentences?
>>
>> Languages with multiple grammatical genders are going to have problems
>> with this.  In French, "a tree" is "un arbre" (masculine), but "a tag"
>> is "une étiquette" (feminine).  We don't currently have a Spanish
>> translation, but this would break there as well.
>>
>> Splitting the article out with the type name is still problematic for
>> languages where articles vary by case, like German, since the
>> translation might be reused in another place requiring a different case.
>
> While all of the above is correct, would we really need to subject typename()
> to translation? IOW, can't we just treat 'blob', 'tree', 'commit' and
> 'tag' as-is,
> as terms of art (i.e. with a specific or precise meaning within a
> given discipline
> or field and might have a different meaning in common usage)?