[josm-dev] Translation

[Dirk Stöcker]

On Tue, 23 Dec 2008, Frederik Ramm wrote:

> It is obvious that such constructs won't work. But concatenation on the
> scale I mentioned must be possible in all languages, otherwise they are
> unsuitable for procedural code execution. Think of a loop structure that
> outputs a headline ("Calculation results:") and then loops over the
> results and prints them - if you say there are languages where one
> cannot even rely on such sequential structure then these languages are
> unsuitable targets for translation of computer programs, are they not?

Even in German language this example is sometimes very bad translation. 
Based on the logic of the software sometimes this cannot be avoided, but 
everwhere, where it can be avoided it should be to get smoother 
translations. I think there is no language, where this cannot be 
represented, but it is a matter of good style :-)

And the translation tools help to avoid retranslating equal string parts, 
so the help with separating short parts would not be so big.

Another more helpful suggestion: Avoid equal but slightly different texts. 
Very often two nearly equal strings are used in different program parts to 
say the same. This can be avoided and reduces translators workload. And 
BTW also unifies the user interface.

Ciao
-- 
http://www.dstoecker.eu/ (PGP key available)