- From: Gunnar Bittersmann <gunnar@bittersmann.de>
- Date: Tue, 14 Jan 2014 11:45:25 +0100
- To: Richard Ishida <ishida@w3.org>
- CC: www-i18n-comments@w3.org
>> To overcome this bad browser behavior, the suffixes need some markup:
>>
>> followed by <span class="suffix">-sson</span> for a male and <span
>> class="suffix">-sdóttir</span> for a female
>>
>> and a rule in the stylesheet (changed file attached):
>>
>> .suffix { white-space: nowrap; }
>
> Actually, what I did was replace the ordinary hyphen with U+2011
> NON-BREAKING HYPHEN (no markup).
Sounds good – at first.
But less so on second thought.
Your English file will be the source code for all future translations.
Translators might not notice the difference between the two hyphen
characters when they visually look the same. You can’t be sure whether
they would copy '‑sdóttir' (with U+2011 NON-BREAKING HYPHEN) from the
English original or if they would retype '-sdóttir' (with U+002D
HYPHEN-MINUS).
Your solution is good for the English original, but might not solve the
problem in translations.
One option might be to escape the non-breaking hyphen:
'‑sdóttir'. But I think that '<span
class="suffix">-dottir</span>' is better readable to the translator,
hence markup (and the additional rule in the stylesheet) would be the
better option.
What do you think?
>> The same applies to the pragraph starting with ‘We already saw that the
>> patronymic in Iceland ends in -son or -dóttir’.
>>
>> Hm, no genitive s here? It was -sson and -sdóttir above. Shouldn’t it be
>> the same in both places?
>
> I think either will do.
Maybe. I just found it confusing that it’s different.
Gunnar
Received on Tuesday, 14 January 2014 10:45:49 UTC