Please add language Kölsch (ksh)

Hi,
I am happy to do that for you. Just a few comments and a question:

There is no "fallback" concept, neither for plural forms nor for languages. If no translation is given it just falls back to English (or whetever the original language of the source code is, should be English, though).

You may have a incorrect understanding of "plural form". Is there really an extra plural form for Zero? This is talking about the word itself, not how the number is represented.

for example, in German.
2 Minuten
1 Minute
0 Minuten

Would there be a different word on the last line in Kölsch or is it the same as the first line, as it is in German? If you want to do this:

2 Minuten
1 Minute
Keine Minute

you should do it in source code, not in the translation.

So, does two plural forms, like German (and English) sound correct?

Henning

Two Plural forms, like English and German have, are indeed incorrect for Kölsch under a most general view.

The sample:

2 Minuten
1 Minute
Keine Minute

translates to
2 Menutte
ein Menutt
kei Menutt - kein Menutte - 0 Menutte (bad!)

In many cases, we can use either of the singular or plural form with zero almost arbitrarily, but at times they go with slightly different grammar for the rest of the sentence, and their meanings may differ a little bit. There are instances, where we have to use a form identical to singular, others, where the form matches plural only, and sometimes neither can be used, of which there are several different traits depending on countability, form, liquidity, and similar - an english equivalent of one of those might be "nothing of X" instead of "zero X". Another thing worth mentioning is that, using a number "0" is often illegitimate or considered "very strange" or "bad style", politely said ;-) and requires different wording. -- So, e.g. you would translate "0 files uploaded" to "0 Datteije huhjelaade" (people laugh) or to "Kein Datei huhjelaade" (acceptable) or to "Nix huhjelade" (good!). Note that, we have Datteije/Dattei (files/file), and if we omit the word, the rhytm in the sentence changes, thus "huhjelaade" becomes "huhjelade". Making the latter difference may seem picky to foreigners, and often people don't care to write it, but those differences are heard in speech, and if you get them wrong, people will either start talking Standard German to you, or laugh, or suggest with subtle sadness in their voices that, you seem to be a foreigner: "Ühr sitt ävver nit fun hee?" - "(But) youre are not from here, are you?" -- A bit similar to many Eastern European languages, we have a notion of "no file uploaded" possibly implying "...but something else was." So as to avoid that, we usually use "nothing" instead of "0 X", unless "X" has the entire focus of speech. Again, this can be seen as picky, and usually people will understand "0 X", especially, when a computer "talks" to them; but so as to achieve quality, we should be able to use the most appropriate translations when software permits.

Another thing possibly of interest is that, with Kölsch, you must usually separate date from time in text. While in tabular forms, you can use several of the usual date/time combinations that Central Europe knows, inside sentences there is no way to do so preserving grammar.

Last, we have a complication with Names. While in some grammatical constructs you can, in most ones you cannot omit articles in front of names. That implies that you need to know their gender, when talking about real persons, not roles. While you can say "an administrator" genderlessly, it is impossible to do so when said administrator is a specific person: "X send you a message" requires either of "dä X", "dat X", or "de X" (we have 2 grammatical genders for females) - luckily, we can avoid that very often using passive contructs which have a common article for two of those cases "You received an e-mail from X" - "... fum X". This may be a bit impolite occasionally, but computers being a bit impolite or gross are quite acceptable. :-)

I am localizing MediaWiki (mainly), now at Betawiki http://translatewiki.net/ since more than three years now. I came accross the above three difficulties translating from English, or German, or (rarely) Dutch all the time, so I am very sure, they exist. :-)

Thank you!

Purodha

Thank you for your good explanation of the situation. I have to point to point out though, that, in my opinion, this does not differ at all from the situation in German or English, with regard to plural forms. Saying "Ich habe null Dinge eingekauft" or likewise "I bought zero things" would sound just as funny in those languages, as they do in Kölsch. "Ich habe nichts eingekauft" and "I bought nothing" would be correct here. So it could be easily argued that German and English really have three plural forms, too. But I think we are missing the point here.

A "plural" form is obviously to be used when there are multiple objects (n >1) and "singular" for single objects (n = 1). The conept of Zero being a number is relatively new to all these languages and has been introduced or at least pushed by information technology. To this day, the acceptance of Zero as a natural number varies (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_number). What I am getting at here is that using Zero as a natural number is something that is used in computer software but not in spoken language and the two things should probably be considered differently. Kölsch has not been used widely in computer software yet, so its users are not as used to seeing something like "0 Menutte" as they are in German or English.

I am not trying to be difficult here and I don't know much about Kölsch but the decission on the number of plural forms has consequences for translators in years to come and changing the plural form later on is a real hassle. I am trying to help you to keep things easy. The English and German languages are no different to Kölsch in this respect, as I have explained and they can happily live with two plural forms, although nobody would talk they way it appears on the screen. You should consider taking that same step for Kölsch, it will make things easier in the future, I believe.

Henning

There is no way around plural 3 forms. The reason being that sometimes, you cannot put '0' together with '1', and at other times you canot put '0' together with 'many' in one grammatical class, depending on context. So we need a 3rd one.

As to the question of texts like "0 files uploaded" - if it concerns rare messages, or ones predominantly seen by technically inclined personell, I do not mind. If it is for just anybody, general public, I believe that we must not try to "educate" users to accept "computerese" or catch-all nonsense sentences like "11 file(s) uploaded to 11st/nd/rd/th floor", etc.

Purodha

I created the Kölsch language in Launchpad:
https://translations.edge.launchpad.net/+languages/ksh

I am sorry, but we could not follow your reasoning for 3 plural forms. After discussing it with my collegue Jeroen (who is Dutch, I am German) we came to the following conclusion:
- The use of plural forms in gettext is not meant to solve the problems you mentioned but to provide for actual different words or word endings for different stages of plural (see the Polish language as an example). Using it for anything else will create problems further down the road.
- Kölsch is closely related to German and Dutch and treating it differently will only create confusion.

I am still glad I could help you in setting up this extra language and wish you all the best in your translation efforts.

Kind Regards,
Henning

I likely will not.
There is no point for me to do it, if you tell me Kölsch were "sufficiently similar to Dutch or German", so I must not use correct grammar. I am sorry, I am not going to ridicule myself with nonsential stuff like exemplified above.

I know for certain that we cannot do without a special case for zero, both from language study, and from years of experience with MediaWiki where I localized many thousand message texts, many of which contain variable substitutions requiring grammatical branching, mostly plural.

If you fear problems, please explain what these problems could be. I know that some slavic languages have far more than 3 plural types, most celtic languages and descendants have pretty complex algorithms for matching grammatical case with numbers, Japanese has different numerals for different classes of things - all these need to be possible anyway, what is the simple 3-way branch of "0,1, many" in comparison?

It is (again from experience) exactly used for the purpose you mentioned, adding the correct endings to words, or choosing the right word forms, depending on numbers in the vast majority of cases I've seen up to now. In most cases the '0'-branch of a message even matches one of the '1'- or the 'many'-branches. But in some instances '1'-like only is correct, in others 'many'-like is the only correct one. In rare occasions none of them is correct for zero. There is no way to cope with two choices only. If you cannot see that, I am sorry, I will not be able to help.

Thank you!

Yes indeed, there is only one localization to Kölsch, of which I don't know who made it (approximately 20 years ago), so I cannot tell whether or not I know its translator(s). About all others, I do know that I know them, and they know me. ;-)

Greetings - Purodha

Thanks Henning Eggers, that solved my question.