Some duplicate translations

[GoogleCodeExporter]

I found several translations that seems to be duplicate. (Or at least in the 
German translation they are.)

$LANG['telephone_short'] = "Tel.";//1
$LANG['phone_short'] = "Tel.";//1

$LANG['logo_file'] = "Logo Datei";//1
$LANG['Logo_File'] = "Logo Datei";//1

$LANG['inv'] = "Rechnung";//1
$LANG['invoice'] = "Rechnung";//1

$LANG['address_country'] = "Land";//1
$LANG['country'] = "Land";//1

This leaded to several questions:

1) How are those files kept up to date?

2) How can such duplicates be found more easily in the future?

3) How does the communication between the developers and the translators 
usually happen?

Original issue reported on code.google.com by r.luthi...@gmail.com on 5 Aug 2011 at 8:46

[GoogleCodeExporter]

These are duplicates but I would be cautious about removing them as both 
variations are probably used in the code. This is a problem that we need to 
look at however.

All of the translations are submitted by volunteers and as far as I know are 
not checked regularly to make sure they are up to date.

I think that there is some documentation about creating translations however I 
have been unable to find it. I will be going through all of the documentation 
soon to make sure that it is all correct so I will try and sort this problem 
then.

As I understand it a lot of the translations have been done by users/developers 
that have just used existing translation files as a guide. These new 
translations are then emailed to a developer who can add it into the system.

Original comment by MattAntW...@gmail.com on 6 Aug 2011 at 8:56

• Added labels: Component-Translation

[GoogleCodeExporter]

The documentation for how to provide translations can be found here:
http://www.simpleinvoices.org/wiki/translate_simple_invoices_to_your_language

Original comment by MattAntW...@gmail.com on 6 Aug 2011 at 9:04

[GoogleCodeExporter]

There are still several questions that are not answered on the wiki page. E.g. 
How are new translation strings put into each translation file? Is a developer 
doing this? Or is there a mailing list where all translators are informed about 
new strings?

My recommendation would be to switch the translations to getext PO files. We 
could use Zend_Translate for the translation within the code. For managing all 
the translation files we could use then e.g. http://trac.transifex.org/ With 
transifex would could probably even get more translators from other open source 
projects.

The advantage of PO files is that the update of the files with new strings 
could be automated. The translators then could focus more on the translations 
and less on the "coding".

Original comment by r.luthi...@gmail.com on 7 Aug 2011 at 11:55

[GoogleCodeExporter]

I think that it is up the developer to update the translation files when they 
add a new string. The localisation system should gracefully fail if the string 
is not present in the translation file and just display the key of the string 
that was requested.

I agree that it should be easier for people to provide translations. Having to 
work with code file can be intimidating for non-programmers. The easiest option 
would be to just have a maintained list of strings in a word document or on a 
wiki.

I've had a quick look at transifex and using getextPO files with Zend_Translate 
and it looks like it might be a good solution. I don't have any experience 
using these tools so I will need to look into it further and see how much code 
we would have to alter to implement them.

Original comment by MattAntW...@gmail.com on 7 Aug 2011 at 6:29