I’m sure I’m not the first one to find this, but here’s a working example for a i18n version of Integer#ordinalize.
Setup
First, you need to define <locale>.rb files in you lib/locales folder for each language. Here are examples for English, German, and French:
# lib/locales/en.rb { :en => { :ordinal => proc { |number| number.ordinalize } } }
This is using the built-in ordinalize extension, which does the English job.
# lib/locales/de.rb { :de => { :ordinal => proc { |number| "#{number}." } } }
German ordinalization is really easy.
# lib/locales/fr.rb { :fr => { :ordinal => proc { |number| "#{number}#{number == 1 ? 'er/re' : 'e'}" } } }
You’ll have to find out how to apply the correct genus all by yourself if you don’t like the self-service-slash :P
More languages can be added, but it gets really complicated for Spanish or Finnish.
Usage
After you restart your server (also in development mode!), I18n.t('ordinal') will return a Proc object. You can use it in your view like this:
<%= I18n.t('ordinal')[count] + ' ' + I18n.t("article") %>Notice the use of [] for the object returned by the I18n.t call: It’s calling the Proc, passing the number argument, which is then ordinalized according to the current locale. You could also use .call(count), or even .(count) in Ruby 1.9, but I prefer the brackets.
It works like this: As you browse the web, Safari detects if you’re on a web page with an article.
No way.
or a 
?
If something has more than, say, 5 parameters, it should be divided into components that have less.
