Suggestions for supporting translation

I've made a start on a basic guide.
https://github.com/loomio/loomio/wiki/Translation

Would love feedback on what is there so far. Either here or via email ([email protected]). If you have a Github account you may be able to edit it directly as well (hard for me to test)

@christianmairoll @jochenwalter @ania3 @joopkieftelapingvi @renato @ammarhalabi @christaklis

The translation to greek language is always 100%... i am translating it almost every week.

The only difficult is the performance of the greek language, because english is very easy and the translation to greek language can not be word by word because some times that doesn't be understable... so every phrase to greek language has to be little different so to has the same meaning as in english...

But until now everything it is OK.

you’re awesome @christaklis

Did you have any specific advice that would help a new translator? I tried to capture some of the basics here and would love to hear if you have anything to add.

Specific advice no i don't have...

I following the below:

• write the other in first face (you) but in plurar, e.g. you (plurar) are doing something.
• And i always try to translate it as in the simple language words i can so to be readable by more crowd... Because languages are evolving to more simple so it's easier to translate it in the modern language and not the language they spoke our ancestors 100 years older.

Maybe put the information about %{this kind of codes} a bit more prominently in there, not behind a link? You could use the link in a read more sense. (I am fully aware of the importance of those parts, but it can be new for new Open Source translators).

thanks @christaklis

good idea @joopkieftelapingvi . It's challenging to keep it not overwhelming, but to make it easy to find detail. I like your suggestion of putting examples or some complicated code and then offering a link for more detail

The only problem with the Portuguese-Brazil Team is that there is no team. It’s only me keeping translations always 100% (what was the same with the Transifex Team… only me keeping Transifex translated into Portuguese-Brazil for months, but Loomio is impossible to give up). And that’s okay, because most Brazilians (certainly not only Brazilians) don’t know the meaning of the word commitment. So, it’s normal… Even laughable.

Maybe, a way to fix it would be put a button like “report translation”, then users would press it, write down the issue in a box, and then send it with no commitment at all. It would also help translators who don’t see their own work in the online website (sometimes its about a word looking bad, or just wrong for the context, or its length for the place, i.e., when you see it online sometimes improvements can be made). Anywayz, it’s alright… But could be better.

I like the new guide.

It doesn't solve the team communications issue, but it gives a nice overview of where and how to start translating. :)

Talking about general improvements of the translation system: It would be awesome to have a way to test translations before they go live. At the moment we can only test changes once a week (while nobody exactly knows then updates are published). However, I fully understand that this isn't a top priority thing and can take huuuge effort to implement. ;)

I like the new guide as well, and I also join the others in pointing to the team communication issue.

One possibility is to put a hint to the fact that there are translation teams using discussion threads on the Translation group here on Loomio (and the possibility of starting one if it does not exist) - teams might choose to use something else to communicate (e.g. email), but at least newcomers would have a point of entry to the corresponding team.

Saying that, I should go right now and create a thread for Arabic. I don't expect participation would be high for Arabic, but I think even jut one more translator would be a great help as I don't contribute enough.

Another point that could encourage new volunteers is to indicate that it is possible to review existing translations.

:)

@laurajacob and me started with the German translation about one year ago when we started to use Loomio. The communication was pretty easy as we see us in person regularly.

Since then more translators joined the team. We did not translate that much since then - I must admit.

I like the ideas written so far and I guess that it is important for a translator team to have a space for communicating with the whole team.

At the moment I am not quiet sure if Loomio - as it is now - supports this well if there is only one discussion for a language in the translator group. Perhaps, a (sub-) group for each language would be more suitable as it was proposed some comments above.