3 ms·
That is a very good article. One architectural takeaway suggestion I've learned over the years, which is not obvious when reading that article: "You should no
by jwr 16y ago
That is a very good article.
One architectural takeaway suggestion I've learned over the years, which is not obvious when reading that article:
"You should not assume that you can generate any part of any string visible to the user without the full context."
Whenever you design a localizable application, it isn't enough to provide a string that can be translated. You have to allow for delegation to the most specific piece of code dealing with the string, because only that piece of code will have the appropriate context to properly produce the string.
This means your code can't just assume it can generate strings somewhere deep inside the guts of a library. The programmer writing the final application that uses your library needs to be able to generate/override those strings on a per-case basis in the actual code that displays them to the user. The strings might be different between two UI windows.
Trust me, I know. I'm Polish. Few languages are as insane as my native tongue. If you don't believe me, take a peek at this concise 252-pages long introduction to Polish numerals: http://www.amazon.com/Liczebnik-grammar-numerals-exercises-language/dp/832420234X http://www.amazon.com/Liczebnik-grammar-numerals-exercises-l...
- mootothemax 16y agoTrust me, I know. I'm Polish. Few languages are as insane as my native tongue. I'm learning Polish and the crazy numbers business has really opened my eyes - doesn't the number 2 have something like 16 or 17 possible forms?
- Nitramp 16y agoAnd Polish has the added benefit of being completely impossible to pronounce for stupid foreigners. I remember practicing to say Hello ("Cześć") for half an evening...
- mootothemax 16y agoAnd Polish has the added benefit of being completely impossible to pronounce for stupid foreigners Hrm, not sure I entirely agree with you there, and I'm both stupid and living as a foreigner in Poland :) The writing system is fantastic in that regard, you can look at a word and have a very good idea of how it should sound. For me, there's only one really difficult sound and that's ń: the best description I've heard of it is the first N in onion. But it's still a bugger to pronounce and hear the difference between, say, koń (horse) and koni (horses).
- pavel_lishin 16y agoThis just means that Polish is a phonetic language - like Russian, my native language, which is 99% phonetic - but that doesn't mean that English speakers can easily make the required sounds. I don't think I've ever met any American who can pronounce ы - though it's fun watching them try.
- getsat 16y agoHah! My Russian tutor says that my accent (which is mimicry based on Russian from songs, films, etc.) sounds almost native EXCEPT for how I pronounce ы. I can't quite get it down correctly. :(
- tripa 16y agoPolish has the great advantage of being highly regular: you learn a few rules, you shape your mouth innards the right way, and you can read out anything. Compare that to french, chinese or english...
- henrikschroder 16y agoJust out of curiosity: Is the Polish numeral grammar changing over time? Has it been less complicated than it is now? Or is it slowly being simplified?
- adamzochowski 16y agoDual form has been disappearing for past couple centuries. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_(grammatical_number) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_(grammatical_number) quoted // Of the living languages, only Slovene and Sorbian have preserved the dual number as a productive form. In all of the remaining languages, its influence is still found in the declension of nouns of which there are commonly only two: eyes, ears, shoulders, in certain fixed expressions, and the agreement of nouns when used with numbers.