Internationalization

[Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen <larsi@ifi.uio.no>]

While reading a discussion on bad, bad translations of computer
programs on no.general, I suddenly got the urge to internationalize
Gnus.  Just imagine -- set the locale to "sweden", and Gnus will promt
you with "Vill du v{rklingen gj|ra detta?" instead of "Do you really
wanna do this?"  Neat!  

(I hate translations, but it sounds neat (to me) all the same.)

If such a thing was to be done, how should one do it?  Has there been
done work in this area for other Elisp packages?

Hm...  One could create mappings from the English prompts and messages
to the current countries' prompts and messages, using a hash table.
Providing that the different messages are unique in English.  Then one
just has to wrap all string in the source code with `(gnus-map "The
string")', and the `gnus-map' function could use a hash table built
from the tranlation file for the country during loadup...  Hm...  How
should the translations be specified in the translation files?  Uhm,
that could be done easily enough, with just about any syntax, with the
English originals as comments.  The skeleton translation file(s) could
be generated automatically by just looking for the `gnus-map' calls in
the source files...

-- 
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
  larsi@ifi.uio.no * Lars Ingebrigtsen