Thread:Support/MediaWiki:Notification-flow-thanks/en and MediaWiki:Notification-flow-thanks/fr

Note: even though I'll be discussing the French translation, I've included /en in the subject because I believe the English text will need to be modified to add another parameter, if the French translation is to be as grammatically accurate as possible.

The English text for this message is "$1 you for $2 in "$3" on $4". Only $1, the username of the person sending the thanks, can be used for GENDER as the message currently exists. But by the grammatical rules of French, the verb will need to agree in gender with the *recipient*, not the sender. The most natural translation into French, and the one I plan to use, is "$1 vous a remercié ...". This uses the verb "avoir", and the gender-agreement rules for "avoir" are that if and only if the direct object of the verb comes *before* the verb in the sentence structure, the verb must agree in gender (and in number) with the direct object. This will not happen if the direct object is a name, because names are placed after the verb -- but if the direct object is a pronoun, then it will happen because pronouns are placed before the verb. Some examples:


 * "Il a remercié Claudette". Claudette is a feminine name, but "remercié" takes the singular, masculine form because the direct object is placed after the verb.
 * "Il l'a remerciée". The pronoun "la" (shortened to "l'" because it comes before a word starting with a vowel) refers to Claudette, a woman, so "remerciée" takes the feminine form.
 * "Il a remercié ses filles". Even though "ses filles" (his daughters) are all girls, "remercié" takes the singular, masculine form because the direct object is placed after the verb.
 * "Il les a remerciées". The pronoun "les" refers to "ses filles", a group of several women, so "remerciées" takes the plural, feminine form.

In "$1 vous a remercié" there is no need to worry about the plural, since the pronoun "vous" is the pronoun of politeness, not the pronoun of actual plurality. But gender still needs to agree: if a user has explicitly stated on her user page that she is female, then she will expect the phrase to be "vous a remerciée", not "vous a remercié". Which poses a problem for this translation, because the given parameters do not include the gender of the email recipient, only the gender of the sender. This is probably sufficient for many languages, where the verb would agree in gender with the sender, but for the French translation, the gender of the recipient is needed.

So the MediaWiki:Notification-flow-thanks/en message needs to be adjusted in the source code, to (if possible) pass the gender of the recipient (the person being addressed as "vous") to the localization, so that the appropriate form of the verb can be chosen. If this is impossible, then the correct translation would be:

$1 vous a remercié pour $2 dans "$3" sur $4.

But it would be better to have something like:

$1 vous a pour $2 dans "$3" sur $4.

where $5 would be the username of the recipient.

The same problem and proposed solution applies to the following messages as well:


 * MediaWiki:Notification-flow-thanks-flyout/fr (and /en)
 * MediaWiki:Notification-flow-thanks-email-batch-body/fr (and /en)
 * MediaWiki:Notification-flow-thanks-email-subject/fr (and /en)
 * MediaWiki:Flow-notification-mention/fr (and /en)
 * MediaWiki:Flow-notification-mention-email-batch-body/fr (and /en)
 * MediaWiki:Flow-notification-mention-email-subject/fr (and /en)

All of these have the form "vous a mentioné" or "vous a remercié", in which the verb needs to agree in grammar with its direct object (the recipient).