Amey-Thakur Plural and gender rules
English has two plural forms, which teaches developers a rule that is wrong nearly everywhere else. Some languages have one form, several have four or six, and the categories depend on the number in ways no hand-written condition captures.
Method
- Use the plural categories your framework exposes. Zero, one, two, few, many, and other are defined per locale by the standard data, and translators fill only the ones their language uses.
- Never write count === 1 in application code. That is the bug in its most common form. The count goes to the formatter and the formatter selects the form.
- Let translators add forms you do not have. A language needing a few form must be able to supply it without a code change, which means the catalog format must allow it.
- Keep the number inside the translated string. Splitting the digit from the noun prevents correct agreement and prevents locale-aware number formatting (see locale-formatting).
- Avoid grammatical gender you cannot know. Constructing a sentence that inflects for a user's gender requires data you may not hold and may be wrong about. Prefer phrasing that does not inflect, and where the language forces a choice, let translators pick a neutral construction.
- Test with a language that has more forms than English. A plural bug is invisible in English by construction, so the test locale must be one with three or more categories.
Boundaries
- Plural rules come from locale data, so they change when that data is updated and are not something to hand-maintain.
- Ordinal forms (first, second) follow different rules from cardinal plurals and need their own formatter.
- Gendered agreement in some languages extends to adjectives and verbs, which is beyond what interpolation can fix and belongs to the translator's phrasing.