[wp-polyglots] To separate a noun from a verb.

[Morgan Doocy]

Isak, this is an excellent summary of the drawbacks of gettext. It's 
actually a well-known issue with gettext, and one that crops up a lot 
in translation, but you illustration was excellent, and will serve to 
explain the issue very well to lots of people on this list.

With this particular example, I have another suggested remedy: use "Log 
in" for the verb sense, and "Login" for the noun. Besides alleviating 
the translation issue with that particular message, it's actually more 
grammatically correct.

We could, of course, extend this further and replace all occurrences of 
"login" (noun) with "username" or something equivalent, which is even 
less ambiguous. I have to confess, the use of "login" to mean 
"username" is something that's always bugged me about the WordPress UI 
from a usability standpoint; perhaps this is a good enough reason to 
make the switch away from the noun "login" altogether.

Ryan and Matt, thoughts? I can submit a patch for whatever we decide on.

Morgan

On Mar 11, 2005, at 2:30 PM, Isak Bergdahl wrote:

> I have searched the polyglots' mailing list archives for an
> explanation or bug submission in Mosquito of this rather linguistic
> bug. It seems not been discussed earlier.
>
> It is obvious in the Swedish translation of the ambiguous word "Login"
> which can be used both as a verb and as a noun. The translators have
> been doing their best, but of course, gettext is too dumb to
> distinguish when "Login" refers to the verb or the noun.
>
> So the Swedish translation of login is consequently flawed – and
> cannot be fixed in WP 1.5. We use different phrasing for the verb
> login – logga in (literally: log in) compared to the noun login –
> användarnamn (literally: username).
>
> This might scare the developers, as indeed, "Login" has this ambiguous
> meaning and demand an overhaul of the terminology used. The remedy is,
> however, not that complicated. Also English-speakers need to know in
> what context "Login" is used to distinguish between the two forms.
> When "Login" is "foo" it refers to a noun, and when stands by itself
> it refers to the action of logging in – being a verb.
>
> A colon (:) could replace the verb "is". "Login: foo" means Login is
> foo. This method is used on the login-page (wp-login.php), "Login:"
> prompts you to enter your username. Simply "Login" suggests what
> should be happening when you press the button with that label.
>
> So, applied on the example of Swedish phrasing: "Login:" translates to
> the noun "Användarnamn"; "Login" means "Logga in", a verb phrase. This
> has been noticed by the Swedish translators, but not consistently by
> the developers.
>
> In the wp-admin/profile.php, the Swedish translation is correct, as
> the string to be translated is "Login:". However, in wp-login.php the
> string is "Login", the latter also goes for the function loginout().
> So instead of being a label to the textbox, it acts as an imperative,
> which looks rather strange. This should be fixed, as at least the
> other Scandinavian languages separate verbs from nouns and probably a
> couple of other languages do as well (German?).
>
> Well, as I am new to this mailing list I might as well introduce
> myself. I am Isak, my native language is Swedish but English should
> not be the hassle it has proven to be. I co-edit miniatyr.se, with
> poetry, short stories and essays.
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