Our platform with all the SDKs (for mobile, web and desktop) addresses all of the concerns you've raised. The SDKs will choose language based on your preferences in the browser, mobile device or OS, yet you are also given a choice to override the defaults by choosing a specific language.
Groxx, you bring up very good points. Let me see if I can address them all.
In the case of "You have {count||message}" as with actually pretty much any translation key, an implied "viewing_user" token is automatically added by the Tr8n SDK to provide the gender of the viewing user. So in languages, like Hebrew, where "You" depends on the gender of the person you are referring to, there would be actually 2 translations for the key:
"Yesh leha {count||hodaa, hodaot}" for {viewing_user: {gender: male}}
"Yesh lah {count||hodaa, hodaot}" for {viewing_user: {gender: female}}
The SDK would know how to pull the right translation and do the substitution at the time of the expression evaluation.
Here is what inline translator tool looks like when you deal with such a situation:
Notice there is a link below the text area to generate context rules for the phrase:
Because in Hebrew it matters whether all users in the list are male, female or mixed.
In Russian, it needs 2 cases - same as English (but only in present tense):
"{users|| lubit, lubyat} eto"
But if the key happened to be in past tense like:
"{users} liked this"
In English is same for whether there is one person in the list or many.
In Russian, we get 3 cases:
"{users|| lubil, lubila, lubili} eto"
Etc...
For the decoration tokens in a sentence like:
"This is indeed [bold] a very [italic: powerful] framework [/bold]"
It is up to the translator to completely shift things around in any possible way to convey the meaning of the original key. The only thing the SDK does is try to ensure that you don't try to inject anything ugly into the sentence. So lets say the translation to the above in Elbonian would be:
"Munchu punchu [bold: munchuchu] punchu"
Since the Elbonian language doesn't even have a separate word for "powerful", but instead a single word for "a very powerful framework", so they had to omit the italic part altogether. And that is perfectly fine. The translator's job is to provide the best translation that would convey the most meaning of the original sentence. Well, and they should try to massage the decoration tokens the best they can, if they can at all.
Since they could use the inline translator tools, they should be able to see their result right away and try to make it look the best they can in the space where the key appears on the site.
The beauty about the decoration tokens is that they are replaceable and reconfigurable even after you have hundreds of translations for the key. As I was mentioning earlier, in Rails the tokens will be replaced with HTML, but in iOS you can create an NSAttributedString and reuse all translations, etc...
I didn't fully understand your "up and a little to the right" example. If you can give me an actual example, that would be great.
TML works in RTL and LTR cases equally well. And since you are the one controlling the container of the app, you can use CSS to make it look like whatever you want.
This is a very tricky issue. Tr8n somewhat solves it by allowing developers to specify translation key constraints for critical sections right in the code. The constraints make the translation key unique, give an indication to translators what they need to do and enforces the translators submissions. For example:
<%= tr("App", :max_length => 6) %>
If translators try to submit something longer than 6 chars, they will get a warning to adjust to the constraints.
In Russian "App" is "Приложение". So they would have to provide something shorter or an abbreviation.
Tr8n uses TML (Translation Markup Language) to define translation keys that now an be shared across all platforms and applications (mobile, web, desktop).
TML can easily handle data and decoration tokens within the same key context:
<%= tr("This is indeed [bold] a very [italic: powerful] framework]",...) %>
You can predefine all your lambdas elsewhere and use default data and decorations throughout your app.
The same sentence above, since it uses TML instead of hardcoded HTML, will actually produce an NSAttributedString in iOS properly decorated in any language.
Tr8n is used in conjunction with Tr8nHub.com where you have access to UTM (Universal Translation Memory) - a huge database of translations used across all applications. You may get fully translated by just connecting to it.
Disclosure:
I've been working on Tr8n for the past 4 years, constantly improving it. We are about to launch a new site soon that will make a lot of things much cleaner and easier. The framework is used by companies like Yammer and Geni.
I forgot to mention that you get inline translation tools, translation widgets, and a lot more...
Our platform with all the SDKs (for mobile, web and desktop) addresses all of the concerns you've raised. The SDKs will choose language based on your preferences in the browser, mobile device or OS, yet you are also given a choice to override the defaults by choosing a specific language.