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

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Oct 9, 2017, 01:30 UTC
Message-ID: <CAPc5daVk+sPLmw4G_AghOVFeO5myKTADQjKr823U3xaQZK+43g@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <20171009005137.4qwvkpedjslvbkca@genre.crustytoothpaste.net>

On Mon, Oct 9, 2017 at 9:51 AM, brian m. carlson <sandals@crustytoothpaste.net> wrote:

Show 19 quoted lines

> 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)?