[Catalyst] I18N with variables

[Cosimo Streppone]

On Fri, 06 Aug 2010 16:57:42 +0200, Bill Moseley <moseley at hank.org> wrote:

> I've been arguing with work about how to key our text.  So far we  
> continue to use the English in the loc() tags in the templates, and then  
> the I18N
> team uses a script to pull out this text which gets sent to translation
> services.

We also chose to use english text as message keys.
I wanted to avoid ids because:

1) Retrofitting i18n in an existing app would make you
    spend weeks/months replacing all the text messages with ids.

2) Designers or front-end developers work suddenly
    becomes much harder. You need to provide them a database of
    already used IDs and what they mean.

3) With IDs it's difficult to identify when a message
    has arguments, and which ones, or even how many of them:

    "Hello, [_1], you have [_quant,_2,message,messages,no messages]"

The main disadvantage I see is that when you change your text,
all the .PO files need to be updated, so you actually kill some
of the existing messages, and you have to manage that with
your i18n tools.

> So, I'd like to hear about your translation workflow and any tools you  
> are using.

I found the latest Transifex (0.9.0+) very good for us:

   http://trac.transifex.org/

We're managing our own instance. Pay attention if you
plan to do that:

   http://my.opera.com/cstrep/blog/2010/06/22/dependencies-suck

-- 
Cosimo