Translations - Instructions?
How will translations be coordinated?
Here's one of Wesnoth's German language files for example.
There will be many language contributors and it would be inefficient to make them use the repository, so we'll need instructions on how to contribute translations. Something like:
===============
== Translations ==
We would love FLARE to be played around the world! To add translations, please visit our live translations folder and pick your language or use the [TEMPLATEFILELINK](template) for new languages.
INSERT EXPLANATION ABOUT PO SYNTAX HERE.
After adding your translations to the file, please send the file to EMAILADDRESS and tell us how we should call you in the credits.
If you're not sure what text editor to use, we recommend gedit.
===============
A translation progress display (like UFO:AI's) would be a good thing too. One could parse things like
strings_total = count('msgid "') - 1
strings_nontranslated = coung('msgstr ""\n[^"]') + count() - 1
strings_translated = strings_total - strings_nontranslated
And calculate the done %
(-1 because of lines 7-8)
Here's a file that has missing single- and multi-line translations: http://svn.gna.org/viewcvs/wesnoth/trunk/po/wesnoth-nr/ga.po?view=markup
Well, there's transifex to help you deal with that kind of stuff, it's bound to make your life much easier. Check it out at www.transifex.net.
With it, translators can create translation teams, work on the potfiles you upload, and can translate either locally using a text editor (or better yet, PoEdit, since people really shouldn't be using general-purpose editors for that - not talking about emacs's potfile editing mode, if you're into that) or online at transifex.
It's free for free software projects, so I don't think there's any good reason to not use it. :)
Thanks for that suggestion, anon!
I only knew about launchpad (but I think this requires your project to be hosted there?
FreeDroidRPG uses Transifex and Warzone's devs tested it a year ago and came to these conclusions:
http://paste.pocoo.org/show/478246/ Bad points about Transifex:
- Its commits reformatted comments, making finding the real change hard.
And every "make update-po" would format them back again into the previous
format.
- Review just offered to download the whole .po file, and with way over
2000 strings, that is not useful. Should rather just show the changed
strings in the web interface.
- No tiered access, i.e. admin can appoint language maintainers,
maintainers can appoint underlings, underlings push to the maintainer,
maintainer reviews, can push to the repo, or give underling push
privileges."https://github.com/Warzone2100/warzone2100/commit/3bac1e29f5f6b6898b922ca86c913c9f97b88cfe - a one string change, iirc."
An alternative was mentioned: http://translate.sourceforge.net/wiki/ (might require hosting)
I haven't thought much about organizing translations. I don't even have gettext added to the project yet, much less a settled story that needs translating.
Not to be discouraged though. It will come, just slowly. Damn real life!
So we started handling translations: https://github.com/clintbellanger/flare/tree/master/languages
We're using a SUBSET of the gettext .po format, basically only simple msgid,msgstr pairs.
Not all of the game's text is ready for the translation files yet, but we'll be there soon.
Also, as I've warned in my latest blog post: all of the current data could be scrapped at any point. At a later point, once more of the game/story/world is laid out and filled in, we'll have an official call for translations.
Just created a Dutch translation for the Frontier mod.
How do I make the .po file available to the flare project on GitHub?
If you're feeling adventurous you could create a GitHub account, fork Flare, add your .po files to your repo, then send in a Pull Request.
But that's a hassle especially for non-coders or people not already on github. It's completely fine to send the .po file to me via email: clintbellanger at gmail
I will go the GitHub route. Will make it easier to contribute more later.
This is just a pilot run to see how easy it is to contribute in the first place. :-)
For those involved in software and website localization, I suggest POEditor.
It's free, intuitive, collaborative, allows import from multiple localization file formats (like pot, po, xls, xlsx, strings, xml, resx) and has a lot of useful features for a fast translation process.