In a part of my software I need, in different languages, lists of words having a fixed number of letters.
My software is already internationalized (using gettext, and it works fine). But, as it's not possible to translate a 4 letters word from english into a 4 letters word in another language (apart from some exceptions maybe), I can't imagine a reasonable way of letting gettext deal with these words lists.
So, for now, I decided to store my words like this (shortened example with english and french names):
FOUR_LETTERS_WORDS = { 'fr': ["ANGE", "ANIS", "ASIE", "AUBE", "AVEN", "AZUR"],
'en': ["LEFT", "LAMP", "ATOM", "GIRL", "PLUM", "NAVY", "GIFT", "DARK"] }
(This is python syntax, but the problem has not much to do with the programming language used)
The lists do not need to have the same length; they do not need to contain the same words.
My problem is following: if my software is to be translated in another language, like say, german, then all the strings that fall within the scope of gettext will be listed in the pot file and will be available for translation. But then, I also need a list of 4 letters words in german, that won't show up in the translation file.
I would like to know whether I need to think to ask the translator if he/she can also provide a list of such words, or if there's a better way to deal with this situation? (maybe finding a satisfying workaround with gettext?).
EDIT Realized the question has actually not much to do with the programming language, so removed the python* tags
You can do it with gettext. It's possible to use "keys" instead of complete sentences for translation.
If you use sentences in your .po files and don't want to have to translate the main language (let's say english), you don't need to translate them and only provide translation files for these words. If gettext finds a translation file, it uses it, else it will display the key (the msgid). It can be a complete sentence or a key, it does not matter.
To do that, you simply need to use a specific text domain for these words and use dgettext() function. The domain allows you to separate files depending on context, or whatever criteria of your choice (functionnality, sub-package, etc.).
To count these words, it's not as easy. You can count them with grep -c, for instance. You can provide a specific key that contains the number of 4 letters words (this would be a dirty hack on which you could probably not really rely).
Maybe there's another way in Python, I don't know this language...