German articles

I noticed another translation problem. If you create a new item, the title for that section is "New %@, and the category is filled in. In English it's just new", regardless of the word. In German we have those ugly articles: http://www.germanlanguageguide.com/german/grammar/article.asp

Example: in English it's "the login" -> "New login", and "the database" -> "New database". In German, it's "der Login" -> "Neuer Login", and "die Datenbank" -> "Neue Datenbank".

Right now it's just the male "neuer" for every category. So for a correct translation, we would have to differentiate between male, female and neutral for each category, or we need translations for every "New %@" individually.

Sorry, I know localization can be a pain in the butt. ;) But currently it's definitely wrong.

Comments

  • Hi *BlackLight,

    It's not just German, we see unique rules for all languages. Unfortunately, there's not much we can do about this for the moment and sadly, every app suffers from this as there are no real industry standards for settling on common APIs for all apps to use. That's why localizations are typically one of the most difficult tasks to pull off and comes later in the application's lifecycle.

    For now, we'll go with the best possible translations we can get that does not confuse people. I know it's frustrating and reduces the quality of the translations a bit but taking on a project like this would comparable to writing a whole new app to handle every little things and it does add more complexity to the app.

    We are learning about how these works as this is the first time we're working with localizations on iOS platform and as we learn, we'll make further improvements over time.

    Thanks for sharing the article, we appreciate it!
  • Hi Mike, thanks for your feedback. I know it's difficult, and let me tell you your translations are already pretty good! I don't see much of those issues, especially considering that the architecture isn't really there yet. Don't worry, it's already quite polished. :)
  • Thanks, we really appreciate the feedback!
  • Hi guys,

    We're going to fix this by removing the "New %@ and add a separate string for each category, so you'll see New Login", "New Credit Card" and so on. We'll add them to Crowdin in as soon as possible.
  • Great, thanks, that'll fix this! :)
  • You're welcome!
This discussion has been closed.