Re: [TFUI] Re: Locale independence and grammatical structure

Marc Brooks wrote:

> > What you're describing - in English - is generally considered a bad
> > practice by those with experience in localization. So rather than
> > adding complexity in order to allow pluralizing, changing case, etc.
> > in other languages, I suggest you remove complexity by storing
> > every phrase separately.
>
> +1 or I8 ;)

The OP (who is not here) described localizing a game. That may have included
the equivalent of RPG conversations. So the number of individual strings
could undergo combinatoric explosion.

> > efficiency is not that big a deal. Program complexity is. And the
> > time and effort of the localizers is definitely a big deal.
>
> +1 really, and localization is just as hard as internationalization.
> Trust us, we've done it.
>
> > Suggestion: Use comments in a text file - or an extra column in
> > a database - to tell the localizers how each string is used.
>
> Exactly right.  My ORM has explicit support for localized strings for
> lookup tables and such, for precisely this reason.  It's so hard to
> graft on this stuff and make it SIMPLE, so "get ugly early"[1] and
> just do it right the first time.
>
> [1] http://www.softwareforyourhead.com/

Oh, another thing: The game might be finished, in English.

-- 
  Phlip
  http://industrialxp.org/community/bin/view/Main/TestFirstUserInterfaces




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