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Conventions for translations

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mcnanton edited this page Aug 31, 2023 · 54 revisions

The following update was made during the R Project Sprint 2023, Warwick and Online (hybrid) during 30 Aug - 1 Sept 2023:

Getting started

Translations workflow

  • Every registered user on the Weblate can act as a translator.
  • The team leader(s) of a particular language is(are) the initial dedicated reviewer(s).
  • For adding new reviewers or peer reviewers to Weblate, please reach out to the respective team leaders via the #core-translation channel on the R Contributors Slack workspace.
  • A peer reviewer can add suggestion(s) to the Weblate, however, the suggestion(s) would need approval from the dedicated reviewer(s) before it is accepted as a translation.
  • Translation
  • Updating glossary
  • Review
  • Updating language-specific guidelines
    • Structure
    • Review

Roles

Guidelines

Review Specifications or guidelines

  • glossary of words
  • language specific glossaries. Weblate has features to flag untranslatable and forbidden terms (see https://docs.weblate.org/en/latest/user/glossary.html)
  • check what they do for Python
  • put on wiki
  • have glossaries specific to languages
  • argument (write in translated language) or vice versa (original term in brackets)
  • create language specific slack channels
  • put in the language specific conventions wiki about the slack channels (if others want to create one or join an existing one)

What (words) not to translate - okay for nouns, not for verbs?, (separate page of technical tips).

  • keyboard keys
  • function names
  • %s, %d
  • put on wiki

Languages and contributions

Language Team Leaders (Contributor/Translator/Dedicated Reviewer)
Arabic Iman Al-Hasani, Abdulrahman Alswaji
Bengali Debartha Paul
Brazilian-Portugese Caio Lente, Renata Hirota
Hindi Saranjeet Kaur Bhogal, Ayush Patel
Japanese Reiko Okamoto
Nepali Binod Jung Bogati
Spanish Geraldine Gómez, María Nanton, Macarena Quiroga

Sustainability of the translations community

  • The #core-translation channel on the R Contributors Slack workspace is main space of communication for the translations community. Join this Slack for communicating with the community and also for sharing any feedback.
  • We encourage people interested in translations to organise and conduct local/regional level events to promote and raise awareness about translations.
  • Highlight milestones (overall and by language)
  • coordinate on github
  • Design acknowledging categories for contributing members (a nice example: https://the-turing-way.netlify.app/afterword/contributors-record#contributors-record-contributors)
  • a getting started page on github

About Weblate

Space for feedback

  • github issues and/or discussions
  • knowing who to write
  • for the translation workflow write to slack

Resources

Some interesting guides, glossaries and handbooks:

Code of Conduct

  • Use the R Foundation Code of Conduct.

Future work

The following discussion is taken from the meeting notes of the EMEA-APAC region R Contributor Office Hours conducted on 13 April 2023:

Saranjeet wanted to know how to handle translating strings such as "Keyboard: PgUp, PgDown, Ctrl+Arrows, Ctrl+Home, Ctrl+End". She has currently translated to Hindi as "कीबोर्ड: पेज अप, पेज डाउन, कंट्रोल+एरोज , कंट्रोल+होम , कंट्रोल+एन्ड ,", which is in Hindi script but is spoken the same as the English words, since these are imported/foreign words.

We looked at how other languages translate this string using the "Other languages" button on Weblate: https://translate.rx.studio/translate/r-project/base-r-gui/hi/?checksum=05ce1e10588b237c&sort_by=-priority,position#translations

  • French translates all the keys apart from those that are in English on a French keyboard: "Clavier : PageHaut, PageBas, Ctrl+Flèches, Ctrl+Début, Ctrl+Fin," According to Hugo: "keys that are translated in a French keyboard: del, end, screenshot, insert. I believe that other keys usually don't include text but use symbols (arrows, shift, pgup, pgdown). Ctrl and Alt are not translated". It looks like Chinese takes a similar approach.
  • Italian does not translate the keys: "Tastiera: PgUp, PgDown, Ctrl+Arrows, Ctrl+Home, Ctrl+End,". Most languages take this approach.
  • Best to discuss among translation team for specific language if possible, to decide best approach. General guidance: don't translate unless these terms are commonly translated on the keyboard, commonly used in other technical documentation, or are simply a translation of the English word into the language script. (The latter advice because if people are choosing to see R messages in a non-English language, they may prefer to see everything in that script where possible).

Suggested each team maintains a page on this wiki https://github.com/r-devel/translations where they note agreed conventions for future contributors/translators.

Clone this wiki locally