zero-other combination bug about go-i18n

[toby3d]

It's funny that in compiled .untranslated.json files I also get completely different results:

// en-us.untranslated.json
[
    {
        "id": "sample_test",
        "translation": {
            "one": "{{.Type}} by {{.Owner}}",
            "other": "{{.Type}} by {{.Owner}}"
        }
    }
]

// ru-ru.untranslated.json
[
    {
        "id": "sample_test",
        "translation": {
            "few": "{{.Type}} by {{.Owner}}",
            "many": "{{.Type}} by {{.Owner}}",
            "one": "{{.Type}} by {{.Owner}}",
            "other": "{{.Type}} от {{.Owner}}"
        }
    }
]

[nicksnyder]

There are a couple things you need to understand about pluralization in languages.

1) zero != 0

You can't assume that plural categories like zero, one, two map to specific numbers like 0, 1, 2. In some languages the "two" category might be used for any number that ends in the number 2 (e.g. 2, 12, 22, etc.).

If you want to have special logic for specific numbers like 0, 1, 2, then you need to write code and have different translations for each of these cases.

// gross pseudocode
if x == 0 {
    t("no_apples")
} else {
    t("some_apples", x)
}

2) Plural categories depend on the language

English has two plural categories: one ("I have 1 apple") and other ("I have 0 apples", "I have 2 apples", etc.). There is no zero category in English because the pluralization for zero is not special.

Russian has four categories: few, many, one, other (and does not have a zero category). You need to provide a translation for all of the four categories unless you are ok with saying the equivalent of "I have 1 apples".

The goi18n tool understands which pluralizations belong to which languages, so it will drop useless pluralizations (e.g. zero in English, and zero in Russian) and add pluralizations that you need to translate (e.g. few, many, one, other in Russian).

The .untranslated.json file is what you send to translators to translate so it include all keys with either the known translation or the source English translation. Since Russian has a few category and English does not, it defaults to copying over the other source string from English. It is up to the translator to decide what translation make sense.

I hope this clarifies some things for you. From what I can tell, all of the behavior that you have observed is expected.