AndreasW2000 Posted November 10, 2020 Share Posted November 10, 2020 HI everyone, I have a question around how to properly write the logic for a translation string. Tricky one. Possibly impossible. It's this one: user_other_activity_reply The English one is : %2$s replied to %3$s's %1$s in - it will parse into "X replied to Y's topic in" In German it's more difficult. We don't use the apostophe-s - we either simply add the s at the end of the word, OR, if there is already an s at the end, we then add an apostrophe, to indicate the omitting of the last s. So instead of John's we write Johns - and instead of James's we write James'. (I guess the above string would translate into "James's" which to my knowledge is actually incorrect as well ... ) Now I need to change the German string to include this logic: adding either an s or an apostophe, depending on the last letter of Y. Any ideas of how to do this? Currently, the German translation string is %2$s antwortete auf %3$s's %1$s in - so I can simply remove the apostrophe, but then the s-edge case is still not covered. Andreas Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Meddysong Posted November 11, 2020 Share Posted November 11, 2020 I don't know whether there's a way to build conditional logic into the string. It's possible with numbers but the relevant template files know that a logic check is coming and are written differently accordingly. You do have the option here of changing the order of elements, so you could have: %2$s antwortete auf %1$s von/des %3$s in if that sounds fairly natural. That just passes a problem on, though, I think because you'd need to choose between articles depending on the gender of topic/blog post/file etc of whatever %1$s is going to be in a situation. You're probably best served to keep the ordering and accept that sometimes it's not grammatically perfect. There are plenty of people who (wrongly) believe that apostrophe-s doesn't follow 's' in English but who have to get used to seeing James's etc online. This sort of conundrum is why. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AndreasW2000 Posted November 11, 2020 Author Share Posted November 11, 2020 Thanks for the reply. You are right, the different sentence structure would solve the problem on one end but cause another at the other end. AIl I already assumed that such a logic would not be possibe within the string itself. But thanks for looking into it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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