String frozen for 2.2.0

[Ethan Blanton]

On Mon, 2007-09-10 at 17:52 +0200, Martin Srebotnjak wrote:
> Strings
> 
> "Attention! %s %s." - around line 12052
> 
> and
> 
> "Attention! You have been %s." - around line 12062
> 
> cannot be properly localized because there is no description what %s
> refers to. 
> If it's a verb, then it cannot be properly localized in languages that
> use several different verb conjugation forms.s (for male, female,
> etc.).
> For sure in Slovenian I cannot translate these two strings sot that it
> will work for all combinations properly.. 

This string is suboptimal, and will be replaced with something with as
much context as possible -- probably everythign but the single local
or remote username.  However, providing enough context to localize
with gender is probably not possible, given the state of the
translation tools today and the information available on various
protocols; for one, we don't always (or, on some protocols, *usually*)
know gender to begin with, and for another, there is no gendered
gettext translation method.  While we could get around this in the
source, it is complicated and ugly (in order to prevent the English
source strings from being identical, there would have to be
disambiguating text which was removed for untranslated text, or else a
translation would be required for "untranslated" text; the latter
makes LANG=C problematic), and not a good solution.

I think this is a case where you'll just have to do the best you can,
using gender-ambiguous phrasing if possible, or some sort of alternate
(equivalent to the english (s)he or his/hers) where not.  I'm sorry
about that, but I, at least, don't see another solution.

I expect there are quite a few phrasings which have this same problem
in Pidgin, particularly for languages with gendered modifiers; is that
not the case?

Ethan

-- 
The laws that forbid the carrying of arms are laws [that have no remedy
for evils].  They disarm only those who are neither inclined nor
determined to commit crimes.
		-- Cesare Beccaria, "On Crimes and Punishments", 1764
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