Partial messages, and word order in translation
I haven't found another appropriate thread, but if it's been answered already, apologies.
There are a number of messages which are only partial sentences, and which are combined (with other messages or with text from elsewhere) to form entire strings on wikimedia projects. E.g. Permissionserrorstext-withaction + actionedit gives a complete message. In some cases, this produces a problem, certainly in my own language, Manx (gv) and presumably in others. The one I just noticed is messages used in logs.
E.g. for blocklogentry: blocked $1 with an expiry time of $2 $3 Which is combined with the user name to form: Genericusername blocked $1 with an expiry time of $2 $3
For languages which aren't Subject-Verb-Object this is grammatically incorrect. For example, I would like to put something like: Ghlass magh Genericusername $1 derrey $2 $3
Is there any way to do this? I haven't found any other languages with such a setup so far.
There are other languages where this is at least not easy. In my language, Kölsch (ksh
) We have some ridiculous lengthy sentences so as to twist them to conform with MediaWikis programming. Especially huge parts of Special:Preferences are really bad - both having utterly broken layouts due to lengthy texts in narrow left columns, and wrong grammar because input fields are in wrong places, rather than in the midst of sentences. Unfortunately programmers are stubbornly unwilling to fix those problems or to accept patches.
Reported, cheers.
The way we fix the log notes in Welsh is to use the complex (periphrastic) verb form and miss off the part of the complex verb which comes before the subject. We end up with an incomplete sentence but since this is a log it reads like a note and therefore doesn't look hugely out of place. So we have - 'Genericusername wedi (past marker) blocio (verb-noun) $1 gan ddod i ben am $2 $3'. Can you do something similar in Manx as a stop-gap whilst waiting for a permanent solution?
Diolch Lloffiwr, mae'n edrych y bydd rhaid i ni wneud yr un peth a chithau. -- Shimmin Beg 17:40, 13 December 2009 (UTC)