Re: [RFC] automatic apostrophes

[Bruno Haible]

John Cowan wrote:
> What is serious, and closely analogous to the Catalan case,
> is the variation between English "a" and "an", or between
> French "le" and "l'".  How, if at all, are these things
> presently handled?

The programmers are given the advice to present only _entire_sentences_
for translation. Since the next word after "a"/"an" and "le"/"la"/"l'"
is usually a noun or adjective, it is part of the sentence, and the
translator translates the whole sentence.

The problem with Catalan exists in particular because it occurs also
with proper names, and plugging a proper name into a sentence is a
frequent operation which is considered as an exception to the "only
entire sentences" rule.

Bruno