Question

In my iPhone app, I need to display object counts which I then localize, since English makes the distinction of singular and plural, I do the following

// pseudocode

if (objectList.count == 1)
{
   NSLog(@"%@", NSLocalizedString(@"1 object", @"display one objects");
}
else
{
  NSLog(@"%@", NSLocalizedString(@"%d objects", @"display multiple objects");
}

This works for English but in many other languages the plural form of a noun is not simply constructed by adding an ‘s’.

As this page explains, there are two things which can differ between languages:

• The form how plural forms are built differs. This is a problem with
  languages which have many
  irregularities. German, for instance,
  is a drastic case. Though English and
  German are part of the same language
  family (Germanic), the almost regular
  forming of plural noun forms
  (appending an ‘s’) is hardly found in
  German.
• The number of plural forms differ. This is somewhat surprising for those
  who only have experiences with Romanic
  and Germanic languages since here the
  number is the same (there are two).

How should I deal with this in my code?

Answer 1

NSLocalizedString is going to be reading from a string table in your app bundle. Therefore, the list of languages you need to support is known at compile time. Rather than worry about how to code for every possible language, just support the ones you are supporting.

If your translator comes to you and says that, to support Martian, you need a separate spelling for even and odd numbers, you can adjust your code then, to something like:

if (objectList.count == 1) {
    NSLocalizedString(@"ObjectCount1", @"display one");
} else if (objectList.count % 2 == 0) {
    NSLocalizedString(@"ObjectCountEven", @"display even");
} else if (objectList.count % 2 == 0) {
    NSLocalizedString(@"ObjectCountOdd", @"display odd");
}

en.lproj/Localizable.strings:

ObjectCount1 = "1 object";
ObjectCountEven = "%d objects";
ObjectCountOdd = "%d objects"; // same as ObjectCountEven

mars.lproj/Localizable.strings:

ObjectCount1 = "1 object-o";
ObjectCountEven = "%d object-e";
ObjectCountOdd = "%d object-o"; // same as ObjectCount1

Sorry if this sounds less than ideal, but human languages are messy and irregular, so it’s a waste of time to try to find an elegant, unified, common solution for them all. There isn’t one.