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From: dbrooks@osf.org (David Brooks)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Printing plural forms.
Message-ID: <19346@paperboy.OSF.ORG>
Date: 26 Feb 91 17:40:05 GMT
References: <1991Feb19.104810.549@ZYX.SE> <3331.27c23984@iccgcc.decnet.ab.com>
Sender: news@OSF.ORG
Reply-To: dbrooks@osf.org (David Brooks)
Organization: Open Software Foundation
Lines: 20

browns@iccgcc.decnet.ab.com (Stan Brown) writes:
|>      printf("%d error%s copied\n", nfiles, nfiles?"s were":" was");

Here you must assume your program is never going to be altered so as
to be usable by a non-English speaker.  Otherwise, you've given them
the job of not only finding all embedded strings and directly
translating them, but also recoding to allow for different grammatical
constructions.

Of course, if you prepared for internationalization you'd use other
techniques anyway.

|>      printf("files copied: %d\n", nfiles);

Another reason to prefer this.

-- 
David Brooks				dbrooks@osf.org
Systems Engineering, OSF		uunet!osf.org!dbrooks
"It's not easy, but it is simple."