User interface localization

[skyjake]

All user-visible strings should be looked up via a translation table so the UI can be localized to different languages.

In practice, wherever there is a user-visible string, it should be replaced with a lookup key. The keys could start with a special symbol, for instance $menu.tab.new. Widgets could then perform the lookup from the translation table and keep a pointer to the user-visible string. When the language is changed at runtime, widgets can then just redo the lookup and everything will instantly update.

Dynamically formatted text is a challenge of its own, but one solution is to translate the format string and use numbered arguments so the order can be changed in the translation (like in Qt).

EDIT: There is now a Weblate server where you can contribute translations: https://weblate.skyjake.fi/projects/lagrange/ui/. Contact me if you want to start translating a new language.

[sikmir]

I would like to help with translating to Russian and Finnish.

[skyjake]

Thanks for the offer! Although I'll probably do Finnish myself, being a native speaker. 🙂 (for dev purposes, too)

[sikmir]

I suggest to use Weblate, it's free for open source projects.

[skyjake]

That's a good idea. I'll look into the supported file formats on Weblate and see what would work best for Lagrange.

[laosb]

Want to see this happening! I would like to help with Chinese translation.

[skyjake]

@sikmir @laosb I've set up a self-hosted Weblate at weblate.skyjake.fi. You're most welcome to create an account and start translating! 🙂

Let me know if you run into any issues with the site. It seems to be working for me at least.

[laosb]

@skyjake Hi I've set up my account, but there's no option for translating to Chinese. Could you add it?

[skyjake]

Which one would you like:

Chinese (Min Nan) (nan) Chinese (Pinyin) (zh_Latn) Chinese (Simplified) (zh_Hans) Chinese (Simplified, Singapore) (zh_Hans_SG) Chinese (Traditional) (zh_Hant) Chinese (Traditional, Hong Kong) (zh_Hant_HK)

[laosb]

I believe Chinese (Pinyin) is not really Chinese, just the pronunciation assisting symbols. I'm native in Simplified Chinese, and can help with Traditional Chinese.

[skyjake]

All right, added!

[skyjake]

@laosb I added you to the Translators group so you should be able to save the translations directly now.

[laosb]

Oh, OK, thank you!

[sikmir]

@skyjake "Save" button is disabled, I can only "Suggest" translation. Is it some restriction?

[skyjake]

@sikmir I've added you to the Translators, too. By default, users can suggest only.

[Carmina16]

Please add Interlingue (code: ie).

[Carmina16]

Is it possible to give me ("OIS") the translator rights for Interlingua [ia] and Interlingue [ie]?

[skyjake]

@Carmina16 I've added you as a translator.

[laosb]

Just finished translating to zh-Hans. Will work on translating to zh-Hant later.

Any chance getting some test build to see the real world performance?

[laosb]

Btw, I'm a little concerned about the font used in Lagrange. Currently it renders Chinese badly with characters changing sizes along the line. I would suggest use system font or Noto Sans CJK if possible.

[skyjake]

Nice! I was just testing this a moment ago.

I'll see about doing a test build. Which operating system do you use?

Currently it renders Chinese badly with characters changing sizes along the line.

Yes that is a problem at the moment, and it's also missing a few glyphs. I will update the UI font.

[laosb]

I'm using macOS on Apple Silicon. Also on iOS.

[skyjake]

OK, I'll do the font update and make a test build for macOS.

[skyjake]

@Carmina16

Interlingua [ia] and Interlingue [ie]?

Ah, earlier I missed ie in Weblate because it's called "Occidental (ie)" and not Interlingue there. (Perhaps to avoid confusing it with Interlingua.) It's now added to the project, so please go ahead. 🙂

[sikmir]

Status:

[skyjake]

Nice, although I just noticed there are 6 untranslated strings in the quick lookup results popup... I'll commit those shortly.

[skyjake]

@laosb Test build for you: https://media.skyjake.fi/lagrange_v1.3.0_macos11.0-arm64.tbz

This build adds Noto Sans CJK (SC) weighing in as an additional 10 MB. Previously, glyphs have been picked from different fonts where available, so that's one possible reason for inconsistent appearance. Now they should all be coming from Noto Sans. Let me know if you spot errors in text rendering.

Some known issues:

• Must restart the app to update the macOS menu items.
• Layout of the Preferences dialog is incorrect immediately after a language change.

[sikmir]

@skyjake It looks like plural forms are not properly extracted for Russian: https://github.com/skyjake/lagrange/blob/94f45c0fe81f7f18d65a3d701da1c8448027d8b7/po/ru.po#L532-L536 Compare: https://github.com/skyjake/lagrange/blob/94f45c0fe81f7f18d65a3d701da1c8448027d8b7/po/fi.po#L535-L538

[skyjake]

@sikmir This seems to be a Weblate issue. The strings originally didn't have plurals, and the export is somehow stuck on the original non-plural strings. I had to manually edit the fi.po and re-upload it to Weblate to fix this... Would you like me to do the same for ru.po?

[sikmir]

Would you like me to do the same for ru.po?

Yes, please.

[skyjake]

Done. Hopefully they are now correctly exported.

I should check German as well, I'm pretty sure it has the same problem.

EDIT: Nope, they aren't translated yet in German.

[skyjake]

Auto-refresh intervals didn't have strings yet, so those were added (fa746aa0766b957acbb36800d4a410c768392d4a).

[laosb]

The test build works mostly fine. Noticed two problems:

• When the field name is too long, the pref window have some overflow as the screenshot shows (maybe I can try to shorten the translation by not explaining what CA is in this case?)
• The menu on macOS doesn't update. Restarting Lagrange is required to get the menu updated to selected language.

[skyjake]

Yeah, those problems are occurring for me too. I'll need to debug the Preferences layout a bit. There should be no need to alter the translations.

The macOS menus not retranslating on the fly is a known issue.

[laosb]

Fixed some date translation in Chinese (S). Also roughly finished Chinese (T), with machine translation from S to T and manual inspection. Hope native Chinese (T) speaker from Taiwan can help correct my mistakes.

[skyjake]

@laosb I think the exported .po file has a couple of problems with the plurals, like I had with Finnish and @sikmir had with Russian. I'll apply a fix...

[skyjake]

We've reached string freeze for v1.3. You still have a couple of days to finalize the translations for v1.3.0.

[laosb]

Received the notice. Just updated both Chinese (S) and (T) to keep it at 100%!

[skyjake]

Aha, of course there's still one more string missing, the menu item for Chinese (T). I'll still add that...

[sikmir]

Russian is 100% ready and looks good for me, looking forward 1.3.0 release.

[sikmir]

One note, as far as this issue will be closed on 1.3.0 release, it makes sense to enable "Start new translation" button on Weblate for registered users (it can be configured to require approval) to make it easy to request new language.

[skyjake]

I think I'll leave this issue open for now, but I will look into the access rights for the translation button.

[sikmir]

@skyjake "Translate" button is out of frame:

[sikmir]

@skyjake Another untranslated strings:

• https://github.com/skyjake/lagrange/blob/dev/src/audio/player.c#L786-L802
• https://github.com/skyjake/lagrange/blob/dev/src/ui/documentwidget.c#L3165

[skyjake]

@sikmir Fixed the dialog layouts being sometimes too narrow.

I suppose the remaining strings can wait for a patch. Maybe the keyboard key names should also be translated?https://github.com/skyjake/lagrange/blob/dev/src/ui/util.c#L104

There's a set of about: pages that could also be translated:

• https://github.com/skyjake/lagrange/blob/dev/src/bookmarks.c#L327
• https://github.com/skyjake/lagrange/blob/dev/src/feeds.c#L651
• https://github.com/skyjake/lagrange/blob/dev/res/about/about.gmi

[sikmir]

Maybe the keyboard key names should also be translated?

I think it's better to leave it as-is, translating "Ctrl/Alt/Shift/Meta/Caps/Space/Esc" seems weird.

[Carmina16]

Yes, keyboard keys should be translatable.

Also, it possible to embed English strings for missing entries in translation files instead of the identifiers?

[skyjake]

embed English strings for missing entries in translation files instead of the identifiers?

That is not possible at the moment. I could enable this for selected things like the keyboard key names, which mostly come from SDL.

[laosb]

I'm not sure about how to do that, but to ensure quality, it's better to include both TC and SC variants of Noto Sans CJK, and switch to the corresponding one accordingly.

Also it might be a good idea to switch for content according to the Gemini header lang={}.

[MCMic]

@skyjake Hello, can I be added to translators for French? (MCMic account on the weblate)

Also I’d love to see an esperanto translation, but I’m not good enough to do it.

[skyjake]

@MCMic You should now have translator rights, please go ahead.

I’ve added Esperanto, too. Let’s see if someone volunteers to do it...