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Pluralization for translations

iskin says:
Now you have in translations only singular (1 cow) and plural (5 cows) forms, but in another languages (mostly in the Slavic languages) we have another pluralization rules.

For example, in Russian: 1 корова, 2 коровы, 5 коров, 11 коров, 13 коров, 15 коров, 21 корова, 22 коровы, 25 коров.

You just need third plural form in translations and custom pluralization rules (a lot of i18n libraries contain rules for many languages, for example Ruby’s R18n https://github.com/ai/r18n/tree/master/r18n-core/locales ).
Posted at 1:35pm on June 6, 2011
tkadlubo says:
Without this feature the l10n will always feel awkward and rushed.

The good news is that anything that RTM is build on will already have frameworks that support proper i18n and l10n. Android has it, iOS has it, you name it. You don't need to worry about weird rules different languages have.

There is a problem with deploying this proposed feature, namely the current situation is English-focused. The translators get two separate strings - '1 cow' and '{NUM} cows'. Joining such pairs would probably be a PITA, but necessary. Then for languages that have more than 2 plural forms you can fill all the 3rd and 4th forms with the awkwardly sounding 2nd forms and let the translators go from there and fix it.
Posted 10 years ago
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