So, can we have something like:
- $string['gradeVerb'] = '.......'
- $string['gradeNoun'] = '.......'
- $string['modulename'] = '.......'
- $string['modulenameplural'] = '.......'
Sometimes an English word will be used as a verb AND as a noun as well, say GRADE for example, and I find it inconvenient to translate these two different usages into Chinese, simply because Chinese speakers use different phrases for those two usages.
So, can we have something like:
So, can we have something like:
Can you give us an example of where this need arises?
Japanese has different forms for nouns and verbs and a lack of plurals too.
For example, on the 'Manual Grade' page, the word 'Grade' is a verb, where you can grade all students. On the other hand, in the 'Administration' menu of a course, 'Grade' is a noun, where you can see the grades of all students.
I can imagine how hard it would be for you to see this cultural difference.
I can imagine how hard it would be for you to see this cultural difference.
Hi Pegasus,
In Japanese the noun for grade hyouten (評点) is different from the verb hyoukasuru （評価する）. I am interested to see how Mits, (Mr. Mitsuhiro Yoshida, the Japanese translator) gets over this problem. But on the manual grade page that I can see, it seems that word Grade is a noun (in English and Japanese). Please see attached.
Timothy
Hi, Timothy
Please see the attached image. That is where I think that 'Grade' is a verb (at least in my opinion).
Pegasus
Please see the attached image. That is where I think that 'Grade' is a verb (at least in my opinion).
Pegasus
I don't have any manually graded questions! I tried manually regrading but I guess it is a question type yes?
While it may be optimal to have the names of the strings set as you suggested, if one definition, say that of the verb is used only in specific modules or functions that refer to a separate dictionary file, then the definition in that file only can be changed/added as a stop-gap measure.
To check ALL of the moodle code and change each instance of "grade" to "gradeVerb" or "gradeNoun" would be a significant undertaking that would be quite error prone, although one meaning could be made the default by doing this:
To check ALL of the moodle code and change each instance of "grade" to "gradeVerb" or "gradeNoun" would be a significant undertaking that would be quite error prone, although one meaning could be made the default by doing this:
- $string['gradeVerb'] = '.......'
- $string['gradeNoun'] = '.......'
- $string['grade'] = $gradeNoun;
Yes, it's a bug.
A quick search (for the regular expression _string\s*\(\s*['"]grade['"] ) finds 57 occurrences in the code base.
I don't have time to work out the noun/verb status of all of them, but if someone can work it out, then I can probably make the changes and check in the fix
I would guess that most of them are nouns, so I would probably just use the strings
$string['grade'] = '......'; // Grade as a noun.
$string['gradeverb'] = '.......';
A quick search (for the regular expression _string\s*\(\s*['"]grade['"] ) finds 57 occurrences in the code base.
I don't have time to work out the noun/verb status of all of them, but if someone can work it out, then I can probably make the changes and check in the fix
I would guess that most of them are nouns, so I would probably just use the strings
$string['grade'] = '......'; // Grade as a noun.
$string['gradeverb'] = '.......';
Although I started this discussion, I don't think it is worthy to revise the source code just for one verb, unless there are too many other instances to tolerate.
What I was trying to say is that there are cultural differences in different languages, it would be nice of those hard working Moodle programmers to try their best to take into consideration those differences, and these efforts would be of great help to translators.
I am not a specialist in languages, but I would like to point out some instances that are not so convenient for translators:
Maybe there are still many other language usages that are presumed in the source code, but I hope Moodle's coding will be more translator-friendly in the future.
Pegasus
What I was trying to say is that there are cultural differences in different languages, it would be nice of those hard working Moodle programmers to try their best to take into consideration those differences, and these efforts would be of great help to translators.
I am not a specialist in languages, but I would like to point out some instances that are not so convenient for translators:
| English |
Translation |
Phrase |
Result |
Comment |
| Week |
週 | Week 1 | 週 1 | The more adequate translation for this phrase in Chinese is "第1週", which is impossible for translators because the order of words of the phrase is presumed, and this is where the cultural difference comes in. So, my advice is that: Don't presume the ORDER of words of a phrase. |
| Attempt |
作答 |
Attempt 1 |
作答 1 |
More appropriate translation of this phrase is "第1次作答". Same reason as above. It would be better if we have a chance to translate 'Attempt $a', and not just 'Attempt'. |
Maybe there are still many other language usages that are presumed in the source code, but I hope Moodle's coding will be more translator-friendly in the future.
Pegasus
There are indeed other languages with translation problems, like Serbian. It is extremely difficult to write a 100% correctly translatable interface.
For your interest, you can read http://moodle.cvs.sourceforge.net/moodle/contrib/grammar-aware/readme.txt?view=markup about the grammar sensitive language pack - another language pack problem to be solved.
You are right about the fact that the order of words in a phrase should not be presumed. Otherwise for a developer it is impossible to foresee all problems possible when translating his or her interface. Therefore I suggest you file a bug in the tracker for each of those examples like above you find. They are solvable with the current mechanisms in Moodle. The problem just needs a little bit more attention. Thanks for pointing this out.
For your interest, you can read http://moodle.cvs.sourceforge.net/moodle/contrib/grammar-aware/readme.txt?view=markup about the grammar sensitive language pack - another language pack problem to be solved.
You are right about the fact that the order of words in a phrase should not be presumed. Otherwise for a developer it is impossible to foresee all problems possible when translating his or her interface. Therefore I suggest you file a bug in the tracker for each of those examples like above you find. They are solvable with the current mechanisms in Moodle. The problem just needs a little bit more attention. Thanks for pointing this out.
I am curious as to how the language packs are translated. Would it make sense to set up a site such as entrans and have the users themselves correct/suggest translations?
That is what ATutor does. I think that each of the Moodle in Japanese etc moodle courses that exist at the moment have forums that serve that function but there is no online database merging despite the existance of a language editing tool inside each moodle installation.
I think there is a simple rule to solve the 'Order of words' problem:
- If a phrase to be translated contains some kind of variable(s), such as number, date, user name etc., then the words of that phrase should NEVER be separated for translation. In other words, if some specific word is used in other phrase(s) containing dynamic variables, then it should not be translated alone.