I am working on the translation of some strings for an app. I have encountered the following problem:
The English version has the following string: "The person uses the", which is used along with an object to form a sentence, e.g. "The person uses the rope."
I can only translate the string to form the appropriate sentence (the objects are given by users). My idea was "La persona usa la/el" as a translation in order to form for example: "La persona usa la/el cuerda", which doesn't seem like a proper solution. The problem is I don't know the gender of the object before hand, I can only put together both my string + object provided.
Is there any appropriate wording in Spanish I can use to solve my problem?
Edit:
Another possible workaround could be to translate as: "La persona usa" and then add the object as plural i.e. "La persona usa cuerdas".
This doesn't solve my problem, but I just add it to (hopefully) make it clear that my question has nothing to do with programming; I am asking about an appropriate wording in Spanish to hide the gender of an object.
user_input = 'mano'; gender = noun_gender_dict[user_input]; if gender == 'F': article = 'la'; else: article = 'el'