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mcnanton edited this page Sep 1, 2023 · 33 revisions

Getting started

Welcome to the translation adventure in R! 🚀

In a world that thrives on interconnectedness and global communication, translation plays a pivotal role in bridging linguistic divides. Translation, the art of rendering one language into another, shatters those confines, unlocking a world of possibilities for understanding and collaboration.

So if you want to start, you can contribute by following these steps:

  1. Sign up to the R Contributors Slack and introduce yourself in the #core-translations channel;
  2. Read the Conventions for translation section of this Wiki, for some conventions that should be followed;
  3. Create an account on Weblate (currently maintained by @daroczig);
  4. List the components of your language;
  5. Choose a component that's not 100% translated (like, for example, the utils package);
  6. Click Unfinished strings to list all messages that haven't been translated and
  7. Start!

This is a short demo that you can check for use in the interface of Weblate.

You can get access to complete documentation of Weblate through this link.

Some translation states are important:

  • Untranslated: Translation is empty, it might or not be stored in the file, depending on the file format.
  • Needs editing: Translation needs editing, this is usually the result of a source string change, fuzzy matching or translator action.
  • Waiting for review: Translation is made, but not reviewed.
  • Approved: Translation has been approved in the review. It can no longer be changed by translators, but only by reviewers.

Exist some key points when you starting translation:

  1. Every registered user on the Weblate can act as a translator.
  2. The translation that you participate, should be reviewing.
  3. 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.
  4. Adding the missing worlds in the Glossary.

Finally, those are the guidelines for the existing languages. If your language doesn't exist yet, please feel free to submit a pull request and create it.

Language
Arabic
Bengali
Hindi
Nepali
Spanish

What is being translated?

All output in R (such as messages emitted by stop(), warning(), or message()) is eligible for translation, as are menu labels in the GUI.

Roles

We use the dedicated reviewers workflow on Weblate. We currently manage 3 roles in the platform. Languages without dedicated reviewers have their translations directly approved without review.

Translators

Every registered user on Weblate can act as a translator. 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.

Admins / team leaders

Admins / team leaders keep the list of admins and reviewers by language up to date. The team leader(s) of a particular language is(are) the initial dedicated reviewer(s).

Reviewers

Reviewers approve the work of translators and ensure the overall cohesion of the translation work in one language. 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.

Sustainability of the translations community

  • The #core-translation channel on the R Contributors Slack workspace is the 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

Future work

  • Integration of dictionaries into weblate

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