[Zope3-dev] Translation question

[Steve Alexander]

Jim Fulton wrote:
> 
> Are translations done on a product-by-product basis, or system wide?

For me, an product-instance - by - product-instance basis.


> We are defining a translation *service* that supports system-wide translation, 
> allowing translations to be shared among multiple applications. It's not clear to
> me whether people will actually do translations that way, or whether translations
> will be performed for individual applications or subsystems. I's really like
> some input on this.

For my main localized application, I have many individual applications 
in a ZODB, all sharing the same product code. Each application may be 
required to have its unique translation into one or several languages.

However, translations may also be shared among many applications.

> It seems to me that using text in an implicit source language as translation
> identifiers, rather than using explicit source languages doesn't make sense
> of translations are shared among multiple subsystems, but is acceptable when
> dealing with subsystem-specific translations.

All of my translations are "subsystem-specific". Individual subsystem 
instances may have extra groups of translations defined.

It may be that my requirements are out of the ordinary, and I should use 
my own utilities for this, rather than trying to (ab)use the translation 
services.

The source-language in this case may be English, but it is the software 
developers' idea of the intent of a particular message, rather than the 
English that is to be presented. So, it is quite valid to have a 
translation between Developer-English and US-English, for example.

It should really be Code-That-Signifies-Semantic-Content rather than 
Developer-English. My coding convention is that these codes should be 
english words or phrases that are unique to the application.

--
Steve Alexander