Using a localization platform to translate [RFC]

horus68 commented 8 years ago

Suggestion: handle translations using a localization platform as Crowdin https://crowdin.com or Transifex https://www.transifex.com This would help translators with clean work and get help from people that are translators and not coders or "Git enabled" people! Why using online platforms?

People just need just their browsers to translate
Its easy to know what is to be translated and to manage collaborative translations
Have translations tools, translation memory, glossaries and so on.
Are free for opensource projects.
You can setup auto-update master files from github.
API are available to automate things.
Then you can use a tool to mass download or the API to download translations and upload them to Github.
Non translated strings are empty on the platforms but auto-filled with english strings when downloaded.

Take a look into Calibre https://www.transifex.com/calibre/calibre or Koreader https://www.transifex.com/houqp/koreader/

Note: I can help you set up the projects and upload translations (but not the API part!). What is needed is a cleaned translations set (just the translated strings without the "to be translated" strings)

geometer commented 8 years ago

I just worry about file formats: we use our own, not a standard Android resources format. Does this mean we have to write some small tool to convert our data?

horus68 commented 8 years ago

I did a "light" test: Crowdin works out of the box, there is just the need to configure the file options (no noode content translate, + translate node attributes + no long lines split) Its possible to upload translations available and downloads just works. Note: I didn't uploaded the \src\main\assets\resources\lang.xml has its already translated and its a single file for all languages.

Transifex: Files are not possible to be parsed into Transifex. Maybe you could ask them to implement your own format. See others here: Supported File Formats - Transifex Documentation - http://docs.transifex.com/formats/

Each platform has different client tool and API, you just need to play around to see what fits your requirements. Transifex new projects are free for Opensource. Crowdin new projects are limited but when asked they are set as full under opensource license. Note: On both platforms when creating a project you need to choose "Public" + Opensource. In transifex its best to set projects as en_GB for master language.

My username on those systems (if you need to invite me as an administrator: https://crowdin.com/profile/horus68 https://www.transifex.com/user/profile/horus68/

geometer commented 8 years ago

Ok, thanks. Let me few days to think about this. ;)

geometer commented 8 years ago

Still thinking :) Btw, any comments on this?

geometer commented 8 years ago

Status update: discussing the idea to migrate from own format to standard Android resources; that would be much more convenient for translation systems too.

geometer commented 7 years ago

Hi, are you still there? What do you think about https://phraseapp.com? I created a test project for FBReader iOS there.

horus68 commented 7 years ago

Still here! I haven't used Phraseapp. Have you tested Crowdin? It worked fine (see above my post on 26 Sep 2016)

geometer / fbreader-module-resources

Using a localization platform to translate [RFC] #4