# Removing apostrophe from possessive **URL:** \ **Category:** Rails I18n\ **Created:** [June 8, 2010, 6:06pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/removing-apostrophe-from-possessive/189843 "2010-06-08T18:06:09Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![merc](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/f07891/32.png) [@merc](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/merc)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2010, 6:06pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/removing-apostrophe-from-possessive/189843/1 "2010-06-08T18:06:09Z")
Hi, I’m using i.e. \<%= t :search\_users\_posts, :possessive =\> true %\> to get “Search user’s posts”. But what if the language I’m translating it to doesn’t use apostrophe, how do I translate such things / remove it? Thanks ---
**Author:** ![merc](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/f07891/32.png) [@merc](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/merc)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2010, 6:12pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/removing-apostrophe-from-possessive/189843/2 "2010-06-08T18:12:35Z")
Conjugations, etc. tough one and a real pain, I agree. Norman Clark is working on a library that is attempting to solve that. You can check it out here: > **[GitHub - norman/spanish: Linguistic utilities for working with Spanish words.](https://github.com/norman/spanish)** > > Linguistic utilities for working with Spanish words. - GitHub - norman/spanish: Linguistic utilities for working with Spanish words. I would love if any of that would make it into the standard I18n gem. Greetings, Juergen ---
**Author:** ![merc](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/f07891/32.png) [@merc](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/merc)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2010, 6:18pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/removing-apostrophe-from-possessive/189843/3 "2010-06-08T18:18:26Z")
On Tue, Jun 8, 2010 at 12:05, Jürgen Feßlmeier [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid)wrote: > Conjugations, etc. tough one and a real pain, I agree. Norman Clark is > working on a library that is attempting to solve that. You can check it out > here: > > [GitHub - norman/spanish: Linguistic utilities for working with Spanish words. · GitHub](http://github.com/norman/spanish) > > I would love if any of that would make it into the standard I18n gem. Thanks for the mention, though I should say I’m still a long way off from having any of that implemented. It’s unfortunately still just vaporware. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![merc](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/f07891/32.png) [@merc](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/merc)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2010, 6:16pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/removing-apostrophe-from-possessive/189843/4 "2010-06-08T18:16:41Z")
2010/6/8 Tony M. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) > Hi, > > I’m using i.e. \<%= t :search\_users\_posts, :possessive =\> true %\> to get > “Search user’s posts”. But what if the language I’m translating it to > doesn’t use apostrophe, how do I translate such things / remove it? > > Thanks \<%= t :search\_users\_posts %\> en.yml : search\_users\_posts: “Search user’s posts” es.yml search\_users\_posts: “Buscar los post del usuario” Sorry, i don’t understand the problem ---
**Author:** ![merc](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/f07891/32.png) [@merc](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/merc)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2010, 6:19pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/removing-apostrophe-from-possessive/189843/5 "2010-06-08T18:19:02Z")
My bad, I shoulda explained, what I’m doing is something like search\_users\_posts: “Search {{user}} posts” 2010/6/8 Andrés gutiérrez [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) ---
**Author:** ![merc](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/f07891/32.png) [@merc](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/merc)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2010, 6:27pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/removing-apostrophe-from-possessive/189843/6 "2010-06-08T18:27:14Z")
2010/6/8 Tony M. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) > My bad, I shoulda explained, what I’m doing is something like > search\_users\_posts: “Search {{user}} posts” \<%= t :search\_users\_posts, :user =\> @user.name %\> en.yml : search\_users\_posts: “Search {{user}}'s posts” es.yml search\_users\_posts: “Buscar los post de {{user}}” Sorry, I think I still do not understand your problem. 2010/6/8 Andrés gutiérrez [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) ---
**Author:** ![merc](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/f07891/32.png) [@merc](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/merc)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2010, 7:09pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/removing-apostrophe-from-possessive/189843/7 "2010-06-08T19:09:59Z")
Yeah you’re right man, why don’t I just do that. I was looking at what our previous developer did. Thanks a lot Mr Andrés! 2010/6/8 Andrés gutiérrez [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) ---
**Author:** ![merc](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/f07891/32.png) [@merc](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/merc)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2010, 7:53pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/removing-apostrophe-from-possessive/189843/8 "2010-06-08T19:53:53Z")
2010/6/8 Tony M. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) > Yeah you’re right man, why don’t I just do that. I was looking at what our > previous developer did. Thanks a lot Mr Andrés! > > I love being useful Greetings ---
**Author:** ![merc](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/f07891/32.png) [@merc](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/merc)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2010, 1:39pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/removing-apostrophe-from-possessive/189843/9 "2010-06-10T13:39:16Z")
Unfortunately there is no easy solution, and your case is still a simple one, as your substitute is the user name. “Search {{user}} posts” % [link\_to("{{user}}'s" % [h(@user.name)], user\_path(@user))] This works great in English but not in other languages. It becomes a real pain, when you substitute entire words of a sentence, you end up with bad grammar in other languages. Consider this: “Please accept this {{post}}!” In the example below, if you substitute {{post}} for “blog” or “article”, it still makes lots of sense in English, but in Spanish, German, etc. you have to deal with gender (der Artikel, e.g. “el”, “la”) or conjugations, (German: der (nominative), des (genitiv), dessen (dativ), dem (akkusative)). The solutions I can think of today are: - change the sentence structure so it works for other languages -\> least common denominator, does not really sound great, difficult as you may not know enough about the languages - don’t substitute, e.g. have multiple combination for same sentence depending on context Greetings, Juergen ---
**Author:** ![merc](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/f07891/32.png) [@merc](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/merc)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2010, 8:24am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/removing-apostrophe-from-possessive/189843/10 "2010-06-10T08:24:56Z")
The problem is actually, that: \<%= t :search\_users\_posts, :user =\> @user.name %\> search\_users\_posts: “Search {{user}}'s posts” Produces “Search user [http://test](http://test)’s posts” (that orphan 's doesn’t look too good) And not “Search user’s [http://test](http://test) posts” which the following would produce: \<%= t :search\_users\_posts, :user =\> @user.name, :possessive =\> true %\> search\_users\_posts: “Search {{user}} posts” Is there an easy way to fix this? 2010/6/8 Andrés gutiérrez [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) ---
**Author:** ![merc](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/f07891/32.png) [@merc](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/merc)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2010, 4:32pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/removing-apostrophe-from-possessive/189843/11 "2010-06-11T16:32:32Z")
Thank y’all so much for this valuable insight. I decided to do as you suggested Jürgen and cut the Gordian Knot by just changing the sentence structure. Thanks again! On Thu, Jun 10, 2010 at 1:32 PM, Jürgen Feßlmeier \< ---
**Author:** ![merc](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/f07891/32.png) [@merc](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/merc)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2010, 3:45pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/removing-apostrophe-from-possessive/189843/12 "2010-06-10T15:45:07Z")
2010/6/10 Tony M. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) > And not “Search user’s [http://test](http://test) posts” which the following would > produce: > > \<%= t :search\_users\_posts, :user =\> @user.name, :possessive =\> true %\> > > search\_users\_posts: “Search {{user}} posts” > > Is there an easy way to fix this? I don’t know. You would may put the entire phrase inside the link \<%= link\_to I18n.t(:search\_users\_posts, :user =\> @user.name), your\_route\_path(@user) %\> #=\> Search user’s posts [http://test/](http://test/)