Migrate WCA Regulations translations to the website translation system

[lgarron]

This has been suggested a few times, and I think it would help significantly to avoid outdated translations.

The tradeoff I see are:

• The bar to accepting translations might be higher (people can't just send us text documents).
  • Per-bullet translation could lead to inconsistency over time. It would be useful if the UI for translating a particular Regulation could show related Regulations or show excepts from a core translations glossary to ensure the same term is translated consistently. (I think it's reasonable for the WRC to maintain a graph of which translations are related to which.)
• We might need a way to handle half-translated Regulations
  • Can we show the English version and have an icon for "contribute a translation!"?
• We need a way to get translations before the English version is released.
  • A simple approach might be to have a (hidden?) "release candidate" page ahead of time.

[Sydney-Weaver]

I think given how much the regulations committee has grown you could likely assign two or so members to handle all things translations in terms of reviewing is what's submitted and organizing them. Is there any way in a digest there could be a call for translations on the WCA? or we could potentially make a google for form submitting translations and keep a log people can refer to for what has already been translated in a language. So for example we can create a document that is just the regulation numbers without them expenaded and at the are translated we can red line them so people know not to bother with that particular regulations. As for a form we can have simple requests such as

Name Regulation (please copy the link to the regulation you are translating) Language [use a drop down box for languages we are seeking] Translation

here i just built an exact example of what i mean https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeTMZYB-wnXVaq7SdEj-aZ7oBz6aobKpzi1LGLth-ThYKcC1A/viewform

Personally I think this would be a good way to handle translations and people may be encouraged to translate small excerpts at a time. The people in charge of this project could organize and begin to build the translation as a whole as well as look for consistency in the translation.

[lgarron]

people may be encouraged to translate small excerpts at a time

The system we use for the website handles that! :-D

[Sydney-Weaver]

Oh I see, so this system is already being built?

[hanwu85]

@lgarron Is this what you are referring to? https://www.worldcubeassociation.org/translations/status

[jfly]

@hanwu85 yes. There's more information about how WCA website translations work over on https://github.com/thewca/worldcubeassociation.org/wiki#are-you-interested-in-translating-the-website-into-your-native-language

[moralsh]

Are we talking about creating a tool similar to the what Jonatan did to help translate the website?

That would be a really great Idea and I would be really interested in helping with it, we could even add some configuration to translate from a release candidate branch in English to a similar branch in the wca-regulations-translations repository.

I've been trying to get myself to update the severely outdated Spanish translation for quite some time but the fact that it's almost like starting from scratch kills my good intentions often, a tool would help lots.

My lack of experience with ruby prevents me from offering myself to do the job, but I can surely help once a skeleton of the app is done and have definitely have some ideas that could make translating the regulations easier.

If we are not talking about making a tool, scratch my whole message and just take it as an idea that could work.

[lgarron]

Are we talking about creating a tool similar to the what Jonatan did to help translate the website?

Yeah, but I would strongly prefer to extend/adapt Jonatan's tool rather than writing a new one.

cc @jonatanklosko in case he has thoughts.