Localization guidelines for developers and other translation requests
TalkTranslating LibraryThing? (General Talk)
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1frsantos
Hi developers,
I just stumbled upon this localization guide for GNOME developers that found very useful if it were used in LibraryThing. Currently I have some problems while translating into Spanish, a language that is more or less "similar" to English: mainly problems with split sentences, plurals, slang -what does "Firehose meet mouth" means??. I finally found the meaning based on a slang definition, but, how do I translate it?- , word consistency -member/user, library/catalog, ...-, text images, and so on. So I don't even imagine what would it be to translate into more different languages like Slovenian, that has 5 plural forms!
So, can I kindly request that LibraryThing developers follow all or most of the next guidelines?: http://live.gnome.org/TranslationProject/DevGuidelines
Some other requests about translations:
* Add a link or a description of the page a text is in to the translations page. When most of the site is already translated, the only way of knowing that there are new texts is going to the "remaining translations" page. Sometimes is not possible to translate a text without the context.
* Add a check to the texts to mark them as "garbage", so developers can remove them easily.
* Add an option to the translation page to flag it as "there are texts in this page not translatable", so developers can add the texts to the translation pool.
* I don't know in PHP, but in Java there is this concept of "resource bundle" that contains locale-specific resources. These bundles are hierarchical: there can be one resource for "es" (Spanish), other for "es_ES" (Spanish for Spain), other for "es_MX" (Mexican Spanish), and so on. If no "es_MX" bundle is found, the "es" one is used, and if no "es" is found, the default language ("en_US" or whatever you used) is used. This allows you to have a coarse grained translation for one main language, but detailed translations for "conflicting" words and sentences. This would be wonderful if implemented.
Thanks
Quico
I just stumbled upon this localization guide for GNOME developers that found very useful if it were used in LibraryThing. Currently I have some problems while translating into Spanish, a language that is more or less "similar" to English: mainly problems with split sentences, plurals, slang -what does "Firehose meet mouth" means??. I finally found the meaning based on a slang definition, but, how do I translate it?- , word consistency -member/user, library/catalog, ...-, text images, and so on. So I don't even imagine what would it be to translate into more different languages like Slovenian, that has 5 plural forms!
So, can I kindly request that LibraryThing developers follow all or most of the next guidelines?: http://live.gnome.org/TranslationProject/DevGuidelines
Some other requests about translations:
* Add a link or a description of the page a text is in to the translations page. When most of the site is already translated, the only way of knowing that there are new texts is going to the "remaining translations" page. Sometimes is not possible to translate a text without the context.
* Add a check to the texts to mark them as "garbage", so developers can remove them easily.
* Add an option to the translation page to flag it as "there are texts in this page not translatable", so developers can add the texts to the translation pool.
* I don't know in PHP, but in Java there is this concept of "resource bundle" that contains locale-specific resources. These bundles are hierarchical: there can be one resource for "es" (Spanish), other for "es_ES" (Spanish for Spain), other for "es_MX" (Mexican Spanish), and so on. If no "es_MX" bundle is found, the "es" one is used, and if no "es" is found, the default language ("en_US" or whatever you used) is used. This allows you to have a coarse grained translation for one main language, but detailed translations for "conflicting" words and sentences. This would be wonderful if implemented.
Thanks
Quico
