# Translating Finnish noun cases? **URL:** \ **Category:** Rails I18n\ **Created:** [June 10, 2011, 11:28am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/translating-finnish-noun-cases/208104 "2011-06-10T11:28:33Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![luislavena](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/l/0ea827/32.png) [@luislavena](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/luislavena)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2011, 11:28am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/translating-finnish-noun-cases/208104/1 "2011-06-10T11:28:33Z")
We have some translation strings like “Search in %{category\_name}” or “Delivery to our showrooms in %{list\_of\_locations}” In Swedish and English, it works fine to just pass in @category.name or @locations.to\_sentence. But in Finnish, instead of “in Foo” you might say “Foossa”, using a suffix instead of a preposition (inessive case). And similarly, you might say “Fooan ja Baran” for “to Foo and Bar” (illative case). And as I understand it, these suffixes are irregular - you can’t just do @locations.map { |x| “#{x}ssa” }. I’m very interested to hear how others handle this. Are there i18n conventions? The best solutions I can think of is to have e.g. a category.name\_inessive\_fi column (and not have columns for Swedish and English, or leave them empty and fall back), and to do similarly for the locations or to have translation keys for e.g. stockholm\_illative. ---
**Author:** ![malesca](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/c89c15/32.png) [@malesca](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/malesca)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2011, 3:10pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/translating-finnish-noun-cases/208104/2 "2011-06-10T15:10:26Z")
Henrik I think this is a general problem also for other languages as e.g. Swedish For example, “New %{attribute\_name}” where attribute\_name is name, decription, time etc should in Swedish be translated as “Nytt namn”, Ny “beskrivning” etc As i understand it the only way to solve this problem is to have specific translations for each case of “New #{attribute\_name}” , as otherwise you end up with writing some kind of grammar ,e.g rules for when to use Ny and Nytt. However, when it comes to langauge , there are allways exceptions that you are not aware of, according to my experience. There are no simple rules! * * * Hans M. St: Larsgatan 50, 58224 Linkping, Sweden Phone: +46708371202 10 jun 2011 kl. 11.26 skrev Henrik N.: ---
**Author:** ![malesca](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/c89c15/32.png) [@malesca](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/malesca)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2011, 3:23pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/translating-finnish-noun-cases/208104/3 "2011-06-10T15:23:25Z")
That’s a good point. In this case, the categories and locations are dynamic (in the DB), and are part of complex phrases with a combinatorial explosion of different variations, so translating them in full wouldn’t work well. ---
**Author:** ![malesca](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/c89c15/32.png) [@malesca](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/malesca)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2011, 5:01pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/translating-finnish-noun-cases/208104/4 "2011-06-10T17:01:07Z")
We’ve had this kind of problem with locations and categories too. It is a hard problem, especially when you have the combinatorial explosion. One way we’ve worked round it is by not having sentences, so something like %{attribute\_name}: New. Probably won’t help in this case but it’s something to consider doing. There was a gem that had an interesting approach, [GitHub - redox/genderize: Provide a gender-based distinction for I18n.translate](https://github.com/redox/genderize), maybe something worth considering too. Chris ---
**Author:** ![malesca](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/c89c15/32.png) [@malesca](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/malesca)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2011, 7:04pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/translating-finnish-noun-cases/208104/5 "2011-06-10T19:04:05Z")
Thanks. That’s a decent workaround, and the plugin does have an interesting take.