Japanese - times on bookmarks

[maciej]

Each bookmark on Pinboard has a little bit of text that shows when it
was added. The current possibilities are

just now
1 minute ago
2 minutes ago
...
59 minutes ago
1 hour ago
2 hours ago
...
23 hours ago
1 day ago
2 days ago
...
27 days ago
4 weeks ago
...
12 weeks ago

For bookmarks older than 12 weeks, we just show the month and year:
october 2007

Could you advise me how best to do this in Japanese?

[shi...@wide.ad.jp]

Hi,

I'm new to the list, so somebody might already answered these questions,
but anyway...

1. Singular/Plural

Japanese language don't distinguish singular nor plural.
Just fill in both "minute" and "minutes" same strings and you're ok.

2. Placement or order of the numbers

Also note that, in the example cases you've shown below, both English
and Japanese words "follows" after numerical number. This is not always
true for other languages...

Also note that, if you want to show date in shorter form in year, month,
day, we usually prefer to use:

Y/M/D

notation and not

D/M/Y
nor
M/D/Y

3. Selection of the expressions.

I think the example you've shown below is just fine.

If you want to use some I18N modules with the computer language you're
using, there are another (long) story on this.

My best bet might be use of strftime (like) function with "C" locale or
without locale support. For example,

1 minute ago => 1分前
%M minutes ago => %M分前

# note that strftime's %M is two-digit output. I prefer trimming '0'.

shigeya

[UltraBob]

And just to follow up in that:

minute = 分
hour = 時間
week = 週間
day = 日
month = ヶ月
year = 年

when you are using the number counter ago (前) format.