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ruby-on-railsgettext

Handling grammatical gender with Gettext

I'm looking for a simple-proper-elegant way to handle grammatical gender with Gettext in a Rails application, the same way plurals are handled with n_() method.

This has no interest in english, since words don't vary with gender, but it does when translating into spanish. His / her is a good use case in english. This is really needed when translating into spanish.

An example:

Considering users Pablo (male) and Ana María (female).

_('%{user} is tall') & {:user => user.name}

Should be translated to

'Pablo es alto'
'Ana María es alta'

Of course, we have access to user.gender

Any ideas?

Cheers!

Solution

  • Using standard gettext features this can be solved using contexts. Like calling appropriate:

    p_('Male', '%{user} is tall')

    or

    p_('Female', '%{user} is tall')

    This will generate two separate strings in gettext catalogs marking them with "Male" and "Female" contexts.