User:Kebap/translation infrastructure

History

• https://github.com/Mudlet/Mudlet/issues/856 - Setup a web-based translation service for Mudlet
• https://github.com/Mudlet/Mudlet/issues/1664 - Translation infrastructure of Mudlet web-presences

Main sources of text

• Mudlet client itself
• Mudlet website
• Mudlet wiki
• "other" spontaneus texts need to be included manually

Processes for each

1. Find out a way to tell outdated texts from relevant current texts which need translation.
2. Get texts out of sources (see above). Can this be automated with any tool? Who should be responsible?
3. Get texts in to translation tool.
4. Translating inside tool (ok this is to be expected, but also needs good interface and workflows)
5. Translators report confusing strings back to Mudlet team with information how they need to be adjusted.
6. Mudlet team updates text in source. Either because of reports, or because of natural evolution.
7. Updated texts from source need updates in translation tool. Export and import again, plus diff.
8. Translated texts will be finished. Export them from translation tool. Automation again?
9. Import translated text to source.
10. Display of translations in source. Here we will need some sort of language toggle switch in each source.

References

• Another great in-depth look at several alternatives and the process in general in this master study thesis about “Translations in libre software”: https://larjona.wordpress.com/translations-in-libre-software/
• multilingual plugins for Wordpress: https://wordpress.org/plugins/search/multilingual
  • Polylang: https://wordpress.org/plugins/polylang/
• Wordpress internationalisation workflow
  • http://www.cardinalpath.com/multilingual-wordpress-international-seo/
• integration to Crowdin
  • Mediawiki
  • Github
• Notes from other translation efforts
  • https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Localisation
  • https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Extension:Translate/Page_translation_example
  • https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki_Language_Extension_Bundle
• Instructions from other project's translations:
  • https://manual.cgeo.org/en/translation

Decisions

• We want to use US English in the source. Sometimes it is still en/GB - e.g. "licence/license", "color/colour", etc. SlySven will provide a dedicated en/GB translation, but origin will be en/US
• When a language offers multiple choices on how to address the reader, we will choose the less formal, more friendly way
• Some texts can't be translated easily in Crowdin, as they are surrounded by < and > for example. This needs to be adjusted in source. See PR #1804 for example and possible solution.
  • Some IRC texts start with ! or alike symbols which must not be translated. Compare above solution.

Updating input strings for translation

• Using Qt Linguist: http://doc.qt.io/qt-5/qtlinguist-index.html
• command will pull strings from Mudlet client's sources and put into mudlet.ts
• command is: lupdate.exe -recursive .\src\ -ts .\translations\mudlet.ts
• lupdate is available during Windows compilation in this folder: C:\Qt\5.11.0\mingw53_32\bin\

Review progress on each language

• Crowdin offers statistics in settings, counting translation percentage of words
• Whereas Mudlet counts percentage of strings and languages >95% receive a gold star
• How to review the progress of current Crowdin translations:
  • Open PR "new Crowdin translation" created automagically by integration robots (Example)
  • Open information from automatic Travis CI build, for example Linux gcc qmake (Example)
  • Find lines starting like "Project MESSAGE: Building translations" and see statistics following (Example)

Example progress snapshot from 2019-04:

Project MESSAGE: Building translations
lang	trnsl	utrnsl	finish	unfin	total	percentage
de_DE	1863	28		1863	0		1891	98
el_GR	0		1891	0		0		1891	0
en_GB	403		1488	403		0		1891	21
es_ES	735		1156	735		0		1891	38
fr_FR	150		1741	150		0		1891	7
it_IT	809		1082	809		0		1891	42
nl_NL	45		1846	45		0		1891	2
pl_PL	514		1377	514		0		1891	27
pt_PT	260		1631	260		0		1891	13
ru_RU	1686	205		1684	2		1891	89
zh_CN	961		930		961		0		1891	50
zh_TW	0		1891	0		0		1891	0
en_US	11		0		11		0		11		100

How to exclude text from translation

• In .cpp files, do not use tr() function. Easy.
• In .ui files, change the opening <string> tags of the elements to <string notr="true">
  • Or click in QtDesigner like this: https://github.com/Mudlet/Mudlet/pull/2481#pullrequestreview-221930644