Grammatical error in German translation of form validation

Django Internals Internationalization
1

Hi! I discovered a gramatical error in the German translation. Found it originally here.

This seems to be the problematic string: "%(model_name)s with this %(field_labels)s already exists."

This translates in German to:

Benutzer mit diesem E-Mail-Adresse existiert bereits.

The word “address” is femine, therefore it needs to be “dieser” instead of “diesem”.

Carlton Gibson mentioned that it’s a Django translation, so I’m here to fix it. :slightly_smiling_face:

How can I do that? I signed up for transifex and try to join the German team.

Best from Cologne
Ronny

2

Hi Ronny,

You need to wait for German team coordinator to accept your Transifex request.

Regarding the fix, I think you should follow the @claudep advice, or put an alternative form in brackets:

Benutzer mit diese(m) E-Mail-Adresse existiert bereits.

Translation taking into the account the gender of a model is not currently supported. #11688 is somehow related to this.

I started to work on “attributive” model translations in Django some time ago, but now I’m stuck on changing the template rendering. Though I created a repository with an intention to gather the requirements for better model translations in Django’s admin. Feel free to take a look and maybe contribute there.

An alternative to gettext machinery extension on Django’s side would be to migrate from gettext to project Fluent as a translation backend, but for that Fluent is still not mature enough yet.

3

Hi @m-aciek

thx for your reply! Then I’ll wait for the approval and try out one of the two suggested ways.

Best
Ronny

4

It is “dieser” not “diese” because of zhe possessive character.

5

Does anybody know how long an approval takes? :sweat_smile: Still nothing happened…

6

@MarkusH Please read above :upside_down_face:

7

What makes it more complicated is the fact, that there can be mutliple fields listed as field_labels in the message, e.g. E-Mail-Adresse und Login. Would article be even different in that case?

8

For what it’s worth I’ve logged this case in django-admin-i18n-requirements project:

% python print_improvements.py ../django de --module conf
┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ current translation with examples                         ┃ enhanced translation                                                       ┃ enhanced examples                                        ┃
┡━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┩
│ db/models/base.py:1467                                    │ gender:field_labels:                                                       │ Benutzer mit diese E-Mail-Adresse existiert bereits.     │
│ %(model_name)s with this %(field_labels)s already exists. │   feminine: '%(model_name)s mit diese %(field_labels)s existiert bereits.' │ Gruppe mit diese E-Mail-Adresse existiert bereits.       │
│                                                           │   other: '%(model_name)s mit diesem %(field_labels)s existiert bereits.'   │ Berechtigung mit diese E-Mail-Adresse existiert bereits. │
│                                                           │                                                                            │ Sitzung mit diese E-Mail-Adresse existiert bereits.      │
│                                                           │                                                                            │ Website mit diese E-Mail-Adresse existiert bereits.      │
│                                                           │                                                                            │ Umleitung mit diese E-Mail-Adresse existiert bereits.    │
│                                                           │                                                                            │ Flat Page mit diese E-Mail-Adresse existiert bereits.    │
│                                                           │                                                                            │ Logeintrag mit diese E-Mail-Adresse existiert bereits.   │
│                                                           │                                                                            │ Inhaltstyp mit diese E-Mail-Adresse existiert bereits.   │
└───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┴────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┴──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
9

That’s why each language has to reformulate to find a way to make them correct. For example, some languages could find easier to translate this way:

There is already an instance %(model_name)s having the same field/s `%(field_labels)s`.

10

As I explained above the correct demonstrative pronoun is “dieser”, NOT “diese” for E-Mail.

And the demonstrative pronoun for “Login” would be “diesem”, thus you need to write “mit dieser E-Mail-Adresse und diesem Login”. As this seems not possible with how the sentence is structured right now, the structure itself should change.

1 Like
11

@doom Thx for your input. But haven’t we already agreed on the fact that we need to restructure the sentence? Still no invite, though, to be able to fix it :disappointed:

12

Thank you for explaining (I’ve fixed in the reqs repo). So to handle properly multiple fields in this message, we would need to move “this” inside “field_labels” to be able to control the declension properly based on the gender of particular field labels.

Polish has the same issue here (“tą”/“tym” for feminine/other gender of field label), plus declension of the noun (field label).

I’ve updated from current incorrect

%(model_name)s z tymi %(field_labels)s już istnieje.

to

Istnieje już instancja modelu %(model_name)s mająca takie same pole/pola %(field_labels)s.

following @claudep suggestion.