Add multi-language support

jessbudd commented 5 months ago

Summary of Changes

This PR:

adds multi-language support using the built-in Eleventy Internationalisation plugin
- follows the folder structure convention recommended by Eleventy
- follows a pattern of distinct urls with an implied default language of english. (Approach chosen for simplicity and SEO)
- automatically updates links to the current languages pages when a translated page exists. Eg /accessibility becomes /es/accessibility if page exists, and remains default if it does not exist. This facilitates an incremental approach where new language pages can be added one at a time.
- adds (google translated) Spanish language translations for all partials, including headers, footers, banners and navigation. This is to prove functionality works, translation should be checked by a native Spanish speaker before merging
- adds a (google translated) Spanish language version of the homepage. This is to prove functionality works, translation should be checked by a native Spanish speaker before merging
- adds a (google translated) Spanish language version of the Get Involved. This is to prove internal link functionality works for translated language pages, translation should be checked by a native Spanish speaker before merging
- adds support for right to left languages with dir property

Testing notes

confirm home page loads as normal without any changes
confirm Spanish home page loads at /es route. All links will continue to point to english versions until spanish versions of pages exist.
from Spanish homepage, inspect the primary navigation links. Confirm that the "get involved" ("Participe") href begins with /es/ whereas the other links do not. Confirm the link works.

Screenshots

Relevant links:

Discord discussion

Future follow up tasks:

Update readme to include instructions for adding new languages
Add language switcher functionality
Convert homepage to a template where all content can be imported from JSON file for ease of updating/adding new translations (maybe)
Add support for multi language posts (maybe)

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AlfonsoML commented 5 months ago

I've looked at the main page and it's mainly OK, of course it needs some adjustments. The main issue is how to talk to the reader. In Spanish there are two "you" one is more formal and the other one is more direct "¿Como puedes ayudar?" is a direct sentence, it's like talking to a friend or at the very least someone that you know. But even if you don't know that person, it's usual to talk this way in Spain. (you == tú) Then the next paragraph is "Necesitamos que se comunique con sus reguladores/legisladores/representantes y consiga apoyo para el cambio en su jurisdicción" and this is a more formal/respectful way to address the reader, and this is more commonly used in South America. (you == usted)

I don't really know which way is better for an international page, as I am from Spain I'm so used to talk to the people as "tú", but if I meet someone older, in a higher position, etc... as a sign of respect I will use "usted", but keeping in mind that this shows that there's a barrier between us. For South America the use of "tú" is sometimes a little rude, they are (or they used to be) more respectful when talking to other people,

So I would really like someone else to chime in and find an agreement about how we should write the sentences.

nickchomey commented 5 months ago

I live in central America and I would agree with what @AlfonsoML said about tu vs usted. I think both are commonly used here, but as he said it comes down to context and tone.

Are we trying to be very formal, official and polite to all people who come across the site? Or are we trying to be more informal and familiar?

I don't think you could ever go wrong with using usted - It is more polite, and people use it all the time here. I get addressed as usted in almost every situation where I'm a customer (just as in English I think we'd generally address customers as sir/madam/whatever). And sometimes strangers will address me as usted, but there's also racial and other forces at play there.

Sometimes I address people as usted, but rarely. And I avoid it somewhat on purpose to challenge the norm of presenting undue/false respect. I can also moreso get away with it as a foreigner and non-native speaker.

However, I ultimately don't think that usted is essential for our purposes. We're not some non-profit begging/pandering for donations from people, nor some bureaucratic and formal institution. Instead we're more a collective of peers of web enthusiasts and, frankly, just citizens. And we're focused more on collective action and spreading the word, than on fundraising (though that's welcomed as well).

We can make specific edits/suggestions when this is decided. And I'll also comment on other things that I mentioned in discord that I saw at first glance.

jessbudd commented 5 months ago

Great question!

@sbesh91 who would be the right person/people to bring into this discussion on the level of formality and tone? This decision will be applicable to all the future language translations, so it's great to be thinking about it early.

AlfonsoML commented 5 months ago

I've checked the pages of Wikipedia, Greenpeace and Mozilla. All of them are using the more informal and direct tone of "tú", so I think that we should do the same.
Using "usted" creates a distance and if people in other countries are indeed used to this informal tone (tú) coming from organizations requesting help, I would use it.

AlfonsoML commented 5 months ago

About the #AppleBrowserBan hashtag, the translation looked strange to me "#ProhibiciónDeNavegadoresApple"
That means that we want to ban Apple's browser.
I propose that it's translated as #ProhibiciónDeAppleSobreNavegadores

AlfonsoML commented 5 months ago

"Open Web Advocacy" is translated as "Promoción web abierta" It lacks articles, it sounds really strange, and instead of promoting, I think that the issue at hand right now is to defend the open web, so I would translate it as "Defensa de la web abierta"

nickchomey commented 5 months ago

Should Open Web Advocacy even be translated? It's a proper noun, after all, and affects/destroys any sort of branding if you translate it. I'm sure that's a challenge that all organizations face when they start offering multilingual experiences.

Here everyone just calls Facebook "Face", for whatever reason, even though it is still Facebook. Likewise Whatsapp is referred to as Whats, for reasons unknown. Anyway, it would be very bizarre if it was LibroCara y QueApp.

Also, the fact that Web (and many other English technical words) is used in Spanish, suggests we should keep it as-is.

Yet, there's translations for Naciones Unidas and plenty of other things. Someone at the top will have to decide what they want to do about this.

Ps. I'm surprised there isn't a word in Spanish like Advocacia 🤷

rejhgadellaa commented 5 months ago

Should Open Web Advocacy even be translated?

Maybe we can add it as a sub-text, under the logo? But yeah, I don't think we should translate it everywhere.

sbesh91 commented 5 months ago

Great question!

@sbesh91 who would be the right person/people to bring into this discussion on the level of formality and tone? This decision will be applicable to all the future language translations, so it's great to be thinking about it early.

I'm well late to this thread, but I do agree with following precedent set in place by organizations such as ours. Mozilla, etc are great examples.

I would also lean towards considering Open Web Advocacy a proper noun as described in a few comments above. We have a brand to maintain and an image to direct people toward in their conscious thought process.

jessbudd commented 5 months ago

Great so it sounds like we've got some translation guidelines:

Open Web Advocacy to be treated as a proper noun and not translated
tone to err on the side of direct and informal in line with similar organisations

@AlfonsoML @nickchomey could you please make inline comments on the PR files where changes are needed and be very specific about the change? (Using Github suggestion feature would be great, as I can just hit the commit button)

nickchomey commented 5 months ago

I just made a lot of edits.

A general comment that applies to everything - it seems like the code has been broken up across multiple lines, which has affected the translations sometimes because half the sentence was on one line and half on the other (and I assume the translator treated them as separate sentences).

I know that HTML doesn't care about line breaks, but it might be worth tidying it all up such that sentences, and even paragraphs, are all contained within the same code line.

jessbudd commented 5 months ago

That's good to know about the line breaks @nickchomey, thanks! Where can I see the edits?

Bit of a tangent, but I'm playing around with a OpenAI's translate GPT to see how it compares to the google translate. One interesting thing to note is that OpenAI does not translate hashtags. When I asked why, it said "because it is a specific tag and proper noun used for social media and campaign identification, and such tags are generally kept in their original language for consistency and recognition across different languages and regions."

I'm curious, what are people's opinions on translating hashtags?

nickchomey commented 5 months ago

where are the edits?

I did the review comment/suggestion thing that you suggested. I added something like 30 comments/edits. You don't see them? They do say "pending" but i dont know if that means they're pending some action by me, or pending approval by you.

Edit: it turns out they were sitting in limbo. I had to submit them all. I believe i'm a member of the OWA github org, so had permissions to merge them straight away, but I selected Request Changes.

nickchomey commented 5 months ago

I'm curious, what are people's opinions on translating hashtags?

One of the comments I made was about hashtags. I don't think they should be translated either. Putting aside the fact that I have always thought hashtags to be worse than useless, if you translate them then they become even more useless as what was meant to be a unifying identifier with viral potential, is now fragmented into many languages.

jessbudd commented 5 months ago

I can see your edit suggestions now, thank you! For any future translations I'd be happy for you to go ahead and merge them ❤️ This is my first time working on repo's I'm not an contributer on so still figuring out the github workflows.

Update: I've committed all your suggestions that don't require further discussion (eg hashtags)

AlfonsoML commented 5 months ago

I don't know what's better about hashtags.
I almost never use them myself, so I'm not the best one to talk about them . The value about using a single unified hashtag is clear, but I see that many times people use multiple hashtags in a single post, so I think that it would be useful that when people post in other languages about OWA they could use the main English hashtag and also add their translated version. That way the promotion of the English hashtag remains, and people that don't speak English can search/follow/[whatever is done with hashtags] their translated hashtag.

AlfonsoML commented 5 months ago

I'm sorry. I'm trying to provide edit suggestions about things that are still wrong (obvious example: Google has translated Discord and Mastodon as Discordia and Mastodonte), but I can't figure out how I can get an editor with the whole file and then go on providing suggestions like @nickchomey did.
I'm not used to work inside GitHub and with PR, so I'm clicking and clicking but not finding out how to do it.

nickchomey commented 5 months ago

@jessbudd perhaps @AlfonsoML needs to be added to the org in order to see/make suggestions?

jessbudd commented 5 months ago

perhaps @AlfonsoML needs to be added to the org in order to see/make suggestions?

I'm not an org member and when I try a different raised PR in the repo I had the suggest commenting functionality, so I'm not sure that's it. @AlfonsoML have you tried following this video?

If that's still not working, I'm happy to take suggested changes in another way. Perhaps a google doc/sheet with 3 columns, English/Spanish/screenshot so I know where to look?

Google has translated Discord and Mastodon as Discordia and Mastodonte)

So, social media platform names should never be translated?

AlfonsoML commented 5 months ago

perhaps @AlfonsoML needs to be added to the org in order to see/make suggestions?

I'm not an org member and when I try a different raised PR in the repo I had the suggest commenting functionality, so I'm not sure that's it. @AlfonsoML have you tried following this video?

If that's still not working, I'm happy to take suggested changes in another way. Perhaps a google doc/sheet with 3 columns, English/Spanish/screenshot so I know where to look?

Google has translated Discord and Mastodon as Discordia and Mastodonte)

So, social media platform names should never be translated?

Thank you for the video, I didn't notice the "make a suggestion button", I've added some fixes that I saw.

With regards to platform names, I don't think that they should ever be translated. They are company names and just because they might have used an English word it doesn't mean that people in other countries call them by their translated version.
No one says "Manzana" instead of "Apple" or "Ventanas" instead of "Windows"

nickchomey commented 5 months ago

Agreed, no proper noun should ever be translated.

I just saw all the corrections that Alfonso made that I missed - I'm not at all surprised that I missed most of them, as they were mostly related to gender and accents, which I still have a poor grasp of. Very strange, though, that Google translate didn't get at least the accents right!

Anyway, it's good that we have a native speaker to review it all!

And I'm glad to see the text got refactored to allow for better translation.

jessbudd commented 4 months ago

@sbesh91 this PR is probably ready for merging, unless @AlfonsoML or @nickchomey have any further translation edits to suggest?

nickchomey commented 4 months ago

No more suggestions from me!

OpenWebAdvocacy / website