Grammar in constructed sentences

[Olaf Kock, geändert vor 9 Jahren.]

Hi Translators,
I'd like to collect some of your collected wisdom regarding the grammar of your mother tongue: There are some places where Liferay constructs expressions based on the english language and grammar. LPS-47722 covers such an example, where the portal constructs the sentence "2 days ago" by translating constructing an expression from "2", the plural of "day" and then sticking that into the "x-ago" sentence. In german this results in incorrect grammatical output "Vor 2 Tage" where it should be "Vor 2 Tagen" (spare me of naming the correct grammatical term - let alone in english).

I'd like to ask for your feedback to that issue with your native language in mind. Also, I'd like to know about other cases that you came across, where the "english" construction of an expression doesn't really work well in your language.

I'm not quite sure how to handle cases like this, without requiring a combinatoric explosion of language keys, pivoting over the available worldwide grammars, or code the output in Java. Maybe you know of a solution for this kind of problem? Surely other projects/products must have run into the same problem.

Thanks,
Olaf

[Olaf Kock, geändert vor 9 Jahren.]

replying to myself: Just after I posted the above question, I found this gem on translating software. It beautifully visualizes the issues described in that ticket without requiring knowledge of all of those languages.

Other constructs that came to my mind is that cases where english just appends 's to indicate it's "someone's (sic!) something" also doesn't work as easily in german. In fact, indicating possession (or however this is called) with 's is plain wrong grammar (though commonly seen...)