On Apr 26, 2004, at 5:46 PM, Joel VanderWerf wrote:

> Mark Hubbart wrote:
>
>> You might look at Apple/NextStep's approach to localization. 
>> (probably others use it too) Basically, there's a file that maps 
>> english text to the translated text. Then, anywhere in the program 
>> where a particular english string is used, it checks for a 
>> translation to the appropriate language.
>
> How do they handle ambiguity, when one English word or phrase should 
> be translated differently in different contexts? For example, "File" 
> is both a verb and a noun in English, but in some languages there are 
> two words.

It seems that they also allow the defining of constants in localization 
files. Looking at various files, I've seen some parts that look like 
this:

   NO_MORE_FOO_BUTTON_USER_CANCEL = "Cancel Foo"

...and parts that look like this:

   "We could not find any more Foo." = "We could not find any more Foo."

... this being, of course, an English file. So I guess it's designed to 
flex around those types of situations.

cheers,
--Mark