Internationalization

[fierce-bad-squirrel]

Do we want the site to be international? What are the implications?

Reddit Thread

[OLawD]

well we have international participants already. when we talk about legislation, we could be talking about something like what /r/fia would want which would be an internet constitution. that's supreme legislation. i don't think we should shut any doors and i know i've heard many aussies, brits, new zealanders, etc...all voice concern about legislation. we should try and be as inclusive as possible, as opposed to exclusive. as to the how, that's definitely something we need to work out.

fierce-bad-squirrel mailto:reply@reply.github.com Monday, April 30, 2012 1:27 PM Do we want the site to be international? What are the implications?

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Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub: https://github.com/hamstar/legislat0r/issues/50

[fierce-bad-squirrel]

I've made a thread about this on reddit. This has huge implications for how the site is developed and maintained. There's a lot of functionality that would need to be added for this to happen.

[jonlaing]

Can you link the thread?

As far as getting the interface to play nice, internationalization is not too hard to build into the interface, granted we had skilled translators. As far as the bills themselves being multi-lingual, I would think that would be on the users to make bills that would grow simultaneously in different languages. There would be no effective way to build in an accurate enough translator to really do anything more sophisticated that, as far as I can see it at the moment.

[fierce-bad-squirrel]

Geographic scope

As far as getting the interface to play nice, internationalization is not too hard to build into the interface, granted we had skilled translators. As far as the bills themselves being multi-lingual, I would think that would be on the users to make bills that would grow simultaneously in different languages. There would be no effective way to build in an accurate enough translator to really do anything more sophisticated that, as far as I can see it at the moment.

I agree. We'll need some crack (volunteer?) translators.

[hamstar]

There would be no effective way to build in an accurate enough translator to really do anything more sophisticated that, as far as I can see it at the moment.

Yes but we could help translators. We could have a translation wizard. Have a view where both bills are on screen but only the translated one can be edited. The system does the translation and leaves it to the translator to tidy up, remove redundancies and add things specific to their country. They can see the original language of the bill as well for nonsensical translations.

[hamstar]

Do we want the site to be international? What are the implications?

At a quick glance I can see some functional implications.

Difference in legislative terms

Football in America is different than football in Europe

Interface language

As jonlaing said this should be fairly easy programmatically, I've seen how chiliproject does it and it seems easy. Just need translators to make the language files.

[jonlaing]

Rails comes with internationalization built in, so yeah, super easy to set up if we're just talking about the interface. I could spearhead setting that part up too if you guys want.

[fierce-bad-squirrel]

jonliang and hamstar, this is incredible! I think the dual view, translation wizard is a great idea. Should there be a way for a translator working on different languages be able to switch through different languages kind of like how OLawD suggested for bill edits on in r//legislator?

[jonlaing]

I guess if our goals is to make this an international site, it might be advantageous to rewrite the bills model to assume that there might be multiple languages and revisions for different regions of a bill.

Should it be built in, or should it be up to the users to "x-post"?

[fierce-bad-squirrel]

For treaties (and proposed UN resolutions?), the internationalization needs to be built in. For state/province and national legislation, it makes more sense to have an "inspired by" type interface, since each region and country will have different requirements for the legislation to be workable.

[jonlaing]

So are you suggesting more of a cross-reference/tagging sort of interface, rather than the single bill having multiple translated versions as suggested by hamstar? I think this is probably a better solution as bills will require slightly different requirements based on the regions they're written for.

[fierce-bad-squirrel]

Yes, exactly.

[jonlaing]

Got it, I'm in favor of that method.

[hamstar]

I'm a bit confused...

For treaties (and proposed UN resolutions?), the internationalization needs to be built in.

I18n will be used on normal bills and stuff though right? Like if someone wants a certain bill implemented in their country they copy it, translate it, and then adjust the language to suit their laws/country? I mean it might not even have the same title or anything but will still be a separate bill.

So are you suggesting more of a cross-reference/tagging sort of interface, rather than the single bill having multiple translated versions as suggested by hamstar? I think this is probably a better solution as bills will require slightly different requirements based on the regions they're written for.

But each bill will have its own distinct text right? So it will just have something indicating the bill that it was inspired by with a link to that bill?

[fierce-bad-squirrel]

Yes, each bill would have its own distinct text.

However, if we want to support treaties and other multi-lateral international legislation, we'll need the ability for users to communicate across language barriers. Translators, lawyers and other experts will need to be intimately involved with such efforts. That's why I said treaties (et al.) could be such a headache to implement.

[hamstar]

Ah yes I see.