"Contribution" still translated as "Spende"

[Jens-Erik]

Already in 2010 there was a thread about this http://forum.civicrm.org/index.php/topic,13379.msg57360.html#msg57360, but still "contribution" is translated as "Spende", which is very confusing as "contribution" is "Beitrag", instead "Spende" means "donation". In this thread someone said he changed the translation to "Beitrag" and it was reverted by someone else. I don't want to play a game like this. So can we agree on "Beitrag", "Beitrag zahlen" etc. in these cases. If you sign-up for a membership, it is something else than if you donate.

[xavier]

It's very much like wikipedia. "we" can agree on whatever you want, you can still have someone - that might even have a good reason for it- that decides for another translation and changes it

There is a glossary to be able to share how we want some words to be translated, have you checked if it's defined there?

On the good news, Mathieu has put in place a process since 2010 where it's much easier to see who changed something. That's a bit of a missing feature on transifex to have a proper history of the changes.

[Jens-Erik]

The only difference is that Wikipedia has drawn their conclusion and has some protected articles and a review process. Well, in Transifex there also seems to be a review function. Maybe that can help.

Well, a contribution (Beitrag) can be a donation (Spende), but we really should use the more general term, which we do in English, so there's no good reason to use the less general and therefore often wrong term as a translation.

The ting is I have set up CiviCRM for an association, and they are not really convinced yet, because they found some flaws and bugs. Pesonally I'd rather use the English original instead of an unprofessional translation, but we need a translation at least for the front end (member sign-up profile and the like).

[xavier]

The spanish have used this review function, I think they are the one that have the best translation. Would be awesome if you could tackle it in german.

I'll ask alejandro to explain how they did it.

X+

[mathieu]

Yes, I second Xavier: in Transifex, you can give users the "reviewer" role (or coordinator). This "locks" the string, and only coordinators/reviewers can change it afterwards.

Also, we can dig in github.com/civicrm/l10n => po/de/contribution.po (or somewhere like that) to see exactly who made the change (although Transifex also now shows the change history). I'd recommend you contact the user, and worst case, we can downgrade their permissions.

And finally, strongly recommended to maintain and promote your glossary:
http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRMDOC/Translator+resources

[Detlev]

Sorry for my late answer. We were working in Germany in the last 2 years quite a lot on the translation (ok, we should have done even more...). And I thougt until now, that we overcame such errors as you described.

However, I did not find the expresssion "Spende" in an inappriate usage. Can you tell me where it is written wrong?
(and, are you talking of "German", not "German (Swiss)"?

Finally: Are you willing to participate in a new effort to improve the German translation?

Cheers, Detlev

[Jens-Erik]

Thanks Detlev! I was actually talking of German and not of German (Swiss), but I also checked "Inherit CMS Language", which for unknown reasons leads to German (Swiss), though I checked German, but this is overridden, even though Drupal language is set to German. The region is set to "Österreich" (Austria), because I do this site for our Austrian partner organization. Does this region setting matter? And even if: Austria is not Switzerland.

Anyway: the German localisation is much better and more complete than de-CH. I don't care if it's "Beitrag" or "Zuwendung" ("Zuwendung" may even be better), as long as it's not "Spende".

There's still one important occurence of "Spenden": The button on the sign-up profile (contribution page), which is labeled "Contribute" in en-US and de-CH, is labeled "Spenden" in de. I can't change it in Transifex, because it has the status "Geprüft"/"Reviewed". Who can change it? Apart from that all these expressions suggest that it's the final step in signing up, which it is not.

Does the de-CH localization make sense at all? There are so few differences, and words like grillieren, parkieren, pos(ch)ten probably don't matter in CiviCRM.  So I guess it's more or less only ß vs. ss and Bundesland vs. Kanton (which is also included in the de localisation). But one complete de localisation would be better than an incomplete de and a bad de-CH localisation.

When you create a new person as admin, you get to a page with a heading "Neue Individual". We have customized data which I call "Mitglied von..." which yields "Kontakte -> Neue Person -> New Mitglied von...." in the menu and "Neue Mitglied von... " in the heading of the page with the form. But at least the persons singing up don't see it, only admins, so it's not that bad as I thought.

And yes, I'm willing to contribute to the German translation, and I have already signed up in Transifex some time ago and translated several strings. And if we continue to use CiviCRM, I guess it's okay that I translate some strings during my working hours.

Cheers,
Jens

[mathieu]

For what it's worth, it's possible to synchronise DE -> DE_CH so that untranslated DE_CH strings are automatically copied from the DE translation, but you can still override regional differences (we do this regularly for FR_CA).

Although currently this process is done manually when necessary, but for fr_CA, I was considering to automate it. Would it be practical for de_CH as well?

[xavier]

Does the de-CH localization make sense at all?

As a swiss (that likes to make fun of canadian french , let me answer that one: it makes sense as much as they want. if there is someone that wants to have DE_AT or DE_CH or FR_CA, I'm not going to argue it's right or wrong that they think they have enough differences to justify a "fork", as long as they are willing to maintain it.

For these "almost like the 'main' language but not quite" it makes sense to automatically fill the untranslated strings. The trick is to find when to change the canonical version eg DE_de) or the localised one (DE_ch). This is an exercise left to the translator...

Mathieu, how do you decide if you fix the FR_fr or the FR_ca?

[mathieu]

For these "almost like the 'main' language but not quite" it makes sense to automatically fill the untranslated strings. The trick is to find when to change the canonical version eg DE_de) or the localised one (DE_ch). This is an exercise left to the translator...

Mathieu, how do you decide if you fix the FR_fr or the FR_ca?

The fr_FR translation has greatly improved  in the past year, so most of the time we only had to adapt regional expressions (or use a less formal tone), but we don't have a communication channel with the fr_FR translators (most translation teams probably have this issue as well). Since they do a great job, I stay out of their way. In general, I recommend having a lexicon/glossary to document differences in regional translations: http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRMDOC/Translator+resources

Alternatively, I suggest to people to post in the forums, although that too, requires a certain level of engagement / collaboration, and we try to keep the entry barrier low (it's already high enough to learn CiviCRM, translating CiviCRM expressions, and learning Transifex).

Otherwise, in general, it's up to coordinators to talk to each other to reach an agreement. If two coordinators don't agree, they can escalate the issue to the i18n maintainers.

[xavier]

Ok,

I will probably have a meetup in Geneva and of the month and another one in Paris by the end of the year. I'll check what they think and see if I can find the translators.

X+

[Jens-Erik]

Does the de-CH localization make sense at all?

As a swiss (that likes to make fun of canadian french , let me answer that one: it makes sense as much as they want. if there is someone that wants to have DE_AT or DE_CH or FR_CA, I'm not going to argue it's right or wrong that they think they have enough differences to justify a "fork", as long as they are willing to maintain it.

I also agree that if someone is willing to maintain a regional variant of a language, they should go for it, but that means that the translation should be complete, otherwise we have a quality problem. And especially if the localisation of the main language is far from being perfect, it would be better to concentrate on that.

Anyway, I'd like to get back to the original topic: It seems to be quite difficult to change the word "Spenden" on the sign-up page. But it's really important to do this, as it looks very unprofessional in our context, a sign-up page for an association. Even the English original "Contribute" doesn't fit 100 % for a sign-up page. The localized data are in a binary form, so I can't edit them directly. Can I somehow get a editable version of the strings and convert it to .mo or is there an editor for .mo files?

Or can I fix it in the template? If yes, could you help me in finding the appropriate location? I've copied the template CRM/Contribute/Form/Contribution/Main.tpl to the custom template directory hierarchy, and apparently this is used now. But I can't find where the button text is defined.

Btw.: i just had to work on our event sign-up website that is based on the Joomla extension "Event Booking". In the admin backend you have a tab for translations including. the original en-GB of all the strings that are used for the sign-up process. Maybe this would be an idea also for CiviCRM, because currently it's very difficult to adopt strings even for a power user with programming skills, as long as you don't understand all the code.

Jens

[xavier]

It's way easier you do the translation in transifex (you can do it directly online)

[Jens-Erik]

Xavier, I tried that, but - as I said - this word is locked in Transifex. Apart from that even a correct translation of "contribute" doesn't fit as a button label for membership sign-up. As it is the first of at least two steps, something like "weiter"/"continue" would be better, but this is not a translation of "contribute". "Spenden" is completely wrong and I can't change it! So what can I do now?

Besides, I have to change the layout, because my colleagues aren't satisfied with it, especially the check boxes with their labels being next to each other an not each one in an own line.

[Detlev]

There's still one important occurence of "Spenden": The button on the sign-up profile (contribution page), which is labeled "Contribute" in en-US and de-CH, is labeled "Spenden" in de. I can't change it in Transifex, because it has the status "Geprüft"/"Reviewed". Who can change it? Apart from that all these expressions suggest that it's the final step in signing up, which it is not.

Sorry Sorry...

I did not read for answer adequately - of course, I could change the translation, resp. I can reopen the reviewed translation.

Please tell me the exact occurence (= where to find) of the mentioned string.

How should the translation read correctly?

In general, I would translate the noun "Spende" to "Zuwendung". Since the button refers to an action, it should maybe read as "Zuwendung bestätigen". However, that's a little long, uhh?

I am waiting for your response!

In general,