I am working on an application, which is available in multiple languages. The user can choose, which terminology should be used throughout the application. E.g. the user can choose, whether it should be called a “booking” or an “appointment”.
We have a total of 6 of these “dynamic nouns”. They appear in multiple places (it is quite a large application). An example is the following sentence: “Are you sure that you would like to cancel the booking?” In this example, “booking” is the dynamic noun.
I already realized that just swapping out these words is not going to work, because of the following reasons:
- pluralization
- indefinite / definite articles
- demonstratives
So it seems to me, like we need to store all these variations for each “dynamic noun”, E.g.: a booking, the booking, bookings, the bookings, this booking, that booking, these bookings, those bookings. We should then inject the right “version” of the noun into a sentence.
Now my question is, will we run into issues with this approach? Are there any constructs besides the 3 above that I am missing? And will this approach work for any language?
Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated! Thank you so much 🙂
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I think you just have to bite the bullet and do a full multi localisation solution. ie all your text is variables:
BookingScreen.Title
BookingScreen.AreYouSure
ConfirmationMessage.Subject
etc
and you replace out the whole thing for the localised string with one of two options chosen for the dynamic verb.
Consider for example:
"Do you want to book an appointment?"
"Do you want to make a booking?"
"There are no slots left to book"
"There is no available time for an appointment"
Now multiply by all the languages you have to support! Sentences just won’t work if you switch words out.
Even without replacing words some phrases just don’t work in different languages. You can’t do a word for word literal translation and expect native speakers not to think it sounds weird
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