[sugar] [PATCH] Improve formatting of relative dates

[Sayamindu Dasgupta]

On Mon, Apr 21, 2008 at 2:18 AM, Tomeu Vizoso <tomeu at tomeuvizoso.net> wrote:
> On Sat, Apr 19, 2008 at 7:54 PM, Eben Eliason <eben.eliason at gmail.com> wrote:
>  > >  +NOW = _('Seconds ago')
>  >  >
>  >  >  Translators may not be able to translate adequately from 'Seconds
>  >  >  ago'. Perhaps a translation comment may help here? Example from
>  >  >  misc.py:
>  >  >
>  >  >  # TRANS: Relative dates (eg. 1 month and 5 days).
>  >
>  >  What if we are explicit in the comment about the intended meaning of NOW, as in:
>  >  # TRANS: Indicating something that just happened; "just now", "right
>  >  now", "moments ago"
>
>  Sounds good.
>
>
>  >  >  +AGO = _(' ago')
>  >  >  ...
>  >  >  +    return result + AGO
>  >  >
>  >  >  This will break in most languages other than english. Sayamindu, do
>  >  >  you have any idea about what can be done here?
>  >
>  >  Likewise:
>  >  # TRANS: Indicating time passed, eg (1 month, 5 days ago); "ago", "in
>  >  the past", "earlier"
>
>  Yes, but in some languages that string may appear in a different
>  position inside the sentence. What about _('%s ago') % result instead?
>  Btw, may be better to change the name of the result variable to
>  something more descriptive (like 'period'?).
>
>  http://docs.python.org/lib/typesseq-strings.html

I would say +1 for the above. It is very difficult to predict how a
translation might rearrange a string, so _('%s ago')  would be the
safest option (along with a #TRANS comment explaining the string).

Thanks,
Sayamindu


-- 
Sayamindu Dasgupta
[http://sayamindu.randomink.org/ramblings]