[libreoffice-l10n] Plural strings that can be zero

Hi,

I noticed a fun translation bug that touches multiple languages.

To see it, create a new Writer document, open the search panel with the
burger menu at the top right, type something in the text box and press
enter.

With the English localisation, at the bottom of the panel it will say “0
results”. However, if you use the French localisation it will say “Une
correspondance trouvée”.

This is because in the pluralisation rules for French zero is considered
to be singular so it uses the first string. In English the first string
is “One match found” which has been translated as “Une correspondance
trouvée”, and in French this string will also be used for zero.

I think the solution would be to translate that string as “%1
correspondance trouvée”. So I guess in general whenever a pluralisable
string has a number that can be zero, with languages that treat zero as
singular it’s important not to hardcode the number in the string.

All of the following languages have the same pluralisation rule:

am - Amharic
as - Assemese
br - Breton
dgo - Dogri
fr - French
id - Indonesian
kab - Kabyle
nso - Pedi
oc - Occitan
pa-IN - Punjabi
pt-BR - Brazilian Portuguese
sid - Sidamo
ti - Tigrinya

Out of those the following seem to have translated the string without a
% so they will probably have the bug:

fr - French
id - Indonesian
pa-IN - Punjabi
pt-BR - Brazilian Portuguese

The rest of them haven’t translated the string yet.

If anybody wants to fix it it’s this string here:

https://translations.documentfoundation.org/search/libo_ui-master/?q=note%3Ax6WGb

I guess it’s something to bear in mind for those languages if we add
more pluralisable strings in future too.

Regards,
– Neil

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