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The Fedora Localization Project - Tips for Translators
Controlling parameters order
When translating, sometime the result of particular translated string contains different parameters order. But it usually is not allowed. There is the workaround to change the order in translation, and it can be found at 'info gettext'.
For example in German, This won't work:
msgid "String
%s' has %d characters\n"%s'"
msgstr "%d Zeichen lang ist die Zeichenkette
so that the number with $ mark can be given as below:
msgstr "%2$d Zeichen lang ist die Zeichenkette `%1$s'"