Testing the new translation system

I'm making LibraryThing's developing translation system public, to see what people think of it. Below you'll find URLs--not the final URLs!--to play with it for a number of languages.

Caveat 1: This is a sneak-peak, not a feature release. We're not promoting this generally yet. We know it's a work in progress.

Caveat 2: Internationalization is a BIG issue, and consists of a lot more than user translation. There are a lot of things to do, a lot of questions. Even with regard to translations, we're just starting. (We haven't written up guidelines, for example, so it's the Wild West.) And there are all sorts of features that need changing—from well-known character set isues to dealing with PayPal in Euros. I'm working on the character set issue now, but wanted to get this part out there first.

So, again, you can play with the translation system—and even do as much as you want—but understand that's all that's out so far, not a whole "internationalization solution."

As far as this part, our ears are wide open. What works? What doesn't? What will make people more likely to help? What problems do you forsee? Etc. etc.

Here are the URLs. Again, they are not the final ones. But they'll work for now:

http://de.librarything.com (German)
http://fr.librarything.com (French)
http://nl.librarything.com (Dutch)
http://cat.librarything.com (Catalan)
http://no.librarything.com (Norwegian)
http://tr.librarything.com (Turkish)
http://cym.librarything.com (Welsh)

(Don't ask about how the languages were chosen. There's both reason and madness to it--to be detailed later!)

Very cool, I've taken a (very bad) stab at some of the French translation, trying to remember back to high school - and cheating a little with the likes of Babel Fish :)

(We haven't written up guidelines, for example, so it's the Wild West.)

I know, I know - I'm writing it tomorrow. Until then, no shoot-outs or ominous swinging dutch doors, please?

ominous swinging dutch doors – What?!

Don't work too hard. I have a feeling some of the rules will emerge. We should probably have a legal thing too, like RemembertheMilk and Google although reduced from 10 paragraphs to 1—don't be a criminal or use this to fly a plane.

Like much else around here, it'll be an interesting social experiment.

I wonder whether it could be easier to cheer / boo for a translation from the edit history, rather than just the current one. This might be more civil than partisans of each of two competing proposals having to overwrite until consensus emerged.

Good idea. Excellent. I'm going to bed now, but I'll add that in the morning.

Looks great so far.
As soon as you decide to implement the portuguese translation (hint, hint), I'll be happy to help edit it.

nice, very nice!!!

Tim, I've realised sometimes translated words are the same as their english equivalents.

Perhaps some form of checkbox on the translation page so these can stop being highlighted in yellow if they're correct.

Hope I haven't mucked anything up but it's a bit addictive lol, I'm sure someone with more French knowledge than I will shudder at all my mistakes but at least it's a good start :)

Yeah. The "same-as" problem is interesting. I wish there were a cleaner solution. I guess a check box is pretty clean, although it adds a lot of 'stuff' in. Another solution like putting "*SAME*" at the end would require learning the conventon. You can, however, change it to something and then change it BACK to the English (which is also the French, or whatever) and it will stick that way without the yellow.

Very cool, Tim!

Well, I of course would want a couple of languages that are not on the list: Italian, and Hungarian. What is unclear from the outside is why the list should be limited at all...

No, it shouldn't. I'll throw it open to everything at some point. But, to test the feature, it's best if things be limited somewhat. (I'm hoping that nobody finds a "deep "problem with the system, that scrambles or requires throwing some snippets out, for example.) Also, I'd like to add languages along with libraries that serve them.

I've been rummaging around in the German translation, where a few other people have already made good progress. My question is, will there be a place to discuss approach?

Here's an example: for things like 'my library' or 'my account' I'm seeing that the translations aren't consistent. Sometimes they show up as 'my' and sometimes as 'your' -- (Meine Bibliothek, Deine Bibliothek)

There are many such terms to translate, and it could get to be pretty colorful if people change some and not all, and other people go in and change some and not all.

My thought is that it would be best to stick to the original (my = mine), for reasons of consistency if nothing else.

Also, the first person in made an executive decision and is using second person singular (familiar form) and a quite informal tone. I'm comfortable with that, but is there some kind of guidelines you would like translators to consult in these matters?

Greenery:

1. Each langauge has a discussion group. It's listed on the translation home page under your language (see http://de.librarything.com/translations.php). I named them all, so the names are in English. But someone should take over from me and rename them.

2. On that group there's discussion of just your question. I like an informal tone that's not downright patronizing. The English site uses "your" where some sites might use "my." If German's distinction between formal and informal ends up feeling wrong, my is a good solution.

3. We're writing up a VERY short of guidelines (eg., be informal but not patronizing, don't translate LibraryThing, respect etc.). Some language-by-language guidelines will also develop, I imagine, like use "my" in German, "you" in Czech, etc.

Super!

A couple of random thoughts, for later - when you go live, perhaps choose native language examples for the tags and books on the home-page (now they're still the original English ones), and, of course, a native language bookpile! Opportunity for a bunch of contests here :-)

When I click Traduire ceci ! on the languages page (http://fr.librarything.com/language.php?l=&alllanguages=1), I get a Javascript error: checkSpans is not defined.

Yay! I already made my first changes. There is a bug however: When I save the changes, LT comes back with an empty (white) page. I have to switch to another tab and back to see my library again.

Good. Fixed. Thanks. That'll happen from time to time--we haven't "hit" all pages yet. Post them here to get quicker action.

I'm amazed at all the work being done translating language names, esp. into German.

"Here are the URLs. ...
http://de.librarything.com (German)
http://fr.librarything.com (French)
http://nl.librarything.com (Dutch)"

I'm quite sure you've thought about this: Any special reason for Wikipedia/ISO 639-1 instead of MARC/ISO 639-2 for the URLs? The latter would make sense seing how much it's already used on the site.
(or is that part of the reason for "not the final ones"?)

That's part of the reason. In fact, as you guess, I do need to translate between the two standards. Fun fun fun.

Okay, I give up. Where does one find the "Cancel" text to translate it? It seems to only appear on the Translate this page page but translating that doesn't offer it.

Strange. It should work, but it doesn't. I'll look into it. It's hard with buttons, because they can't be yellow in the same way.

Just something I noticed; not everything translates well. For instance, 'unread' can be used about both singular and plural in English ('one unread book', 'five unread books'), but in Norwegian there are two words: 'én ulest> bok', but 'fem uleste bøker'.
I'm sure there are issues like this with other languages as well.

Yes, I'm sure that's true. How do you think it should be handled?

Honestly I'm not sure. It's the only problem I've encountered so far, but I'd imagine other-language issues could be completely different, so I can't really see a generic solution for it.

The HTML tags in the profile page snafu the translations.php page. If you log out of a translated site and try editing a translation from that page you wind up with 'blank' in the list of translations, too.

I've turned some of the HTML to square brackets for now, because despite not having actually touched that field it insists on applying itself when you submit. :-/

Please close your html tags.

Done.

Wonderful initiative!
But what about the swedish version?

Swedish version is here: http://se.librarything.com/
One sentence translated so far. ;-)

Great! :-)

Then I'll continue...

Perhaps the language page should now include English in the green box.

There seems to be inconsistency in translating Group Profile: Group Name regarding whether to translate just the left part or the whole thing. That it is not coded as Group Profile: <SUB1> confirms the intention to allow translating the name, at least sometimes. But is that really right to do so if the group never has topics in the target language?

I was going to ask the same question as #33 because I'm unsure myself. IMO, some names can be translated (like 'LibraryThing in X') while others would perhaps be better off if they stayed in their original language.
If they're to be translated though, some sort of "warning" about the fact that discussions will not necessarily be held in the target language may be necessary.

If you are going into translation then I guess that one of the greatest books ever written on the subject should be on here if it isn't already so I'll add it - Friedrich Schleiermacher Des Differentes methodes du traduire ... err, sorry but you have to read French or German to appreciate it :-))

Allowing us to translate the grops names defeat the idea of allowing the groupd owner to change the groups name in the first place, if you ask me. Only the permanent groups ought to be translateable. Creating new entries to translate each time a group ou group zeitgeist is created is ridiculous.

#36: I agree. I've kept away from those so far. What better indicator for the group language than the group title? It works the other way round too: If there is a group with the title in German or French, it's highly likely, that the primary group language will be German. Or French.