[FEATURE] Explore Crowdin in-context translation feature

[esmeetewinkel]

What? I came across this in-context translation tool that can be used with Crowdin, our translation platform. It would be good to find out whether this would work for our app use case.

Why? Currently deployments are concerned that the translations are too expensive / labour intensive because translation is done without context and therefore needs a number of iterations to reach an adequate level. Recently for the FacilitatorApp Malaysia deployment, translation corrections were done using the app's feedback system (i.e. selecting a translated string and typing the corrected translation). As a second step, someone then went into Crowdin and made the corrections. I think this could be done in one go with this in-context system. It could also alleviate the "translation" step.

Other details A few notes on the "Quick Demo" video on the page linked above (@jfmcquade):

• (2:15 onwards) he has his translation files set up in a certain way, using .po files rather than .json files like we do. He does imply that other ways are supported, but if we did need to change that it would mean changing the logic that applies translations too (shouldn't be a huge job...) We are using .po files as well, I'm using scripts in the idems_translation repo to convert. I don't think there's a massive difference, the .po file is basically a config followed by source / translation / optional note triples
• Do we already use crowdin "projects" (2:42 in video)? We already use Crowdin projects, e.g. we have a project for PLH containing all PLH apps and chatbots strings
• 7:03 in video: He points out that external translators tend to charge more for using this tool, and gives some reasons why Not too concerned about this because several translation iterations are also costly.

[chrismclarke]

Just to quickly add... Not sure if long term idems is thinking more of managing it's own translations tools or using others. In terms of open source the main ones I could find were:

Weblate - python-based, gpl3 license, more administrative dashboard side of things Tolgee - java(kotline)-based, mixed licenses (basically only free for 10 users since recent changes), but does have in-context translation feature (which sits outside its enterprise license, so could possibly be forked/adapted)

I remember trying out crowdin in-context a while back and really struggled to get it working (UI was very jumpy, struggled to identify a lot of the text, froze the page a bit), but that was probably about 2years back so hopefully its improved since then