CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

Currently new translators will be admitted to transifex automatically - see also this Q&A on StackExchange: http://civicrm.stackexchange.com/questions/8374/who-admits-new-transifex-translators

For several reasons (particularly quality of translations), I think there should be a workflow to welcome new translators and give them a good introduction to do's and dont's as well as best practices. Information/introduction could include:

• Translations made on transifex affect all users of the language (for individual translations use Word Replacement)
• Only translate if you really feel safe in both the original and the translation language
• Try to stick to the original string as close as possible
• Make sure to translate commonly used words such as "Contribution" in the same way in all strings
• As proper translation may depend on how and where the string is used in CiviCRM make sure to know the context of the string

This is just off the top of my head - I would love to to hear what other involved in CiviCRM's translation community think:

• Other information that should be included
• Where/how to provide that information and keep up to date (Transifex, CiviCRM Wiki...)?
• Should new translators be admitted automatically or should someone have to confirm them?
• Standards on using Glossary and Comment Function in Transifex
• ....

Hi Mathieu,

thanks for your reply - I would also love to hear more opinions, especially because I am not too convinced about the automatic admission in combination with the reviewing feature.

If we admit new translators automatically, we can hardly expect people to read any guidelines posted on an external page such as the CiviCRM-Wiki. This is particularly true if there is no prominent place (on transifex, the welcome email etc.) to request them to do so. At the very least I would like to have an email including the most important aspects, a link to further documentation and a contact person for the language in question.

As I wrote in the SE question, the reviewer feature is nice but it often implies that you are fixing something that wouldn't necessarily have to be broken in the first place. We had a lot of trouble with incorrect translations lately and I think, many of the could have been prevented if new translators were advised on best practices.

The worst part is, that we usually don't notice the faulty translations until after a new CiviCRM version is released which means that they are already "distributed". Even if one fixes them right away on transifex, the damage is already done, particularly because many non-technical users hardly update their translation files at all.

For German there are currently more than 10k strings that translated but not reviewed. As no one in the (rather small) German community, is able to properly review those strings in a timely manner, I could be bold and simply mark them all as reviewed (thus preventing further changes) but that is probably not the idea of the reviewed tag.

One thing that came to my mind:
The problem occurs mainly for new strings because people (often new CiviCRM users) will translate them before an experienced reviewer has a chance to look at them. Would there be any chance to have a look at new strings and translate them before they go on transifex? Or to be noticed as soon as they are on transifex? Currently the only possibility I know to identify new strings is to use the "updated after" filter on transifex but that requires actively logging into transifex and looking for them.

More input or feedback anyone? What is the situation in other countries/languages?

Regards
Fabian