There's always an exception. You have two choices. First: you might split it into three strings and trust the translator to handle it. For example, you might

There's always an exception. You have two choices. First: you might split it into three strings and trust the translator to handle it. For example, you might pick: "Your query matched %(filecount)s in %(directorycount)s"? "%g files" "%g directories" with appropriate plurals for the %g ones. Another translator might pick: "Your query %(filecount)s %(directorycount)s"? "matched %g files" "in %g directories" to get the flexibility they need. You only hit a problem there when you get one word that is requires declination dependent on both numbers in a way that you can't fit to be contiguous with the numbers. It's not foolproof, but it's certainly enough flexibility if you're willing to re-word things slightly. Alternatively, and this is my favoured way, you can have the result of a plural lookup be a second msgid, for example: msgid "files_found_by_n_directories" msgstr[0] "files_found_directory_0" msgstr[1] "files_found_directory_1" msgstr[2] "files_found_directory_2" msgid "files_found_directory_0" msgstr[0] "Your query didn't match any files" msgstr[1] "Your query matched a file in no directories" msgstr[2] "Your query matched %(file)g files in no directories" msgid "files_found_directory_1" msgstr[0] "Your query didn't match any files in a directory" msgstr[1] "Your query matched %(file)g file in a directory" msgstr[2] "Your query matched %(file)g files in a directory" msgid "files_found_directory_2" msgstr[0] "Your query didn't match any files in %(directories)g directories" msgstr[1] "Your query matched %(file)g file in %(directories)g directories" msgstr[2] "Your query matched %(file)g files in %(directories)g directories"