[Etoys] How to translate Etoys

[Bert Freudenberg]

On Jul 23, 2007, at 22:39 , Takashi Yamamiya wrote:

> Hi Bert,
>
>> We should create a better file hierarchy, named "po". In think the  
>> class category should be the directory name and contain the  
>> translations:
>>  po/EToys/EToys.pot
>>  po/EToys/de.po
>>  po/EToys/pt.po
>>  po/Connectors/Connectors.pot
>>  po/Connectors/de.po
>>  po/Connectors/pt.po
>
> It is easy though, how do we actually setup the translation  
> environment?
> If we follow Fedora's way, is it fit to Fedora's convention?

The directory layout is pretty much independent of what the  
translators will see.

> I have looked http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Activity_Translations  
> shortly, but I couldn't find out the exactly process we should to.

Well the "process" just is to open a bug about translation and hope  
for people jumping on.

> Or, how about to use launchpad.net? https:// 
> translations.launchpad.net/
> It has fancy web tool for gettext so that it seems to be good for
> non hacker people.

Yes, I like that a lot, we should use it if we can, and announce on  
squeak-dev once we did so. OTOH, we would need to get the OLPC  
version of etoys into that system first, I'm not sure how simple that  
is - it's not just a translation site but a whole project hosting site.

>> Also, as you mentioned, we still should reduce the number of  
>> categories. Like, all Connectors stuff should be one file only.
>
> How many files did you expect? Yoshiki suggested me that three is  
> enough.
> It is hard to decide before getting started actual translation  
> process.

Well ... for OLPC we only really need one file, true. However, I  
suspect a file with a couple of thousand entries might scare  
contributors - that's one reason to split. For "other" software you  
have a separate translation file for each library and each  
application. That's the granularity people expect, a few hundred  
entries max. Squeak combines so many things into one that a single  
translation file becomes unwieldy. Also, separate files give context.  
And ultimately we don't want to maintain these translations on our  
own but let the Squeak community handle it.

That's why I think we need one file for everything that could  
reasonably be "broken out". That matches quite well with class  
category, given that's the granularity that Monticello uses and  
people are accepting. I have attached the count of translations per  
file as of now for reference.

What we could do to not end up with too many files for now is have  
one "catch-all" fallback file and then a few files based on class  
category. I'm open for suggestions though :)

>> And I notice that some Comments are not too helpful - like, all  
>> comments in Protocols.pot are the same.
>
> I know, current one is just a hack. The gettext exporter only works  
> with
> literal receivers properly. We should fix, but it will need more a  
> week.

Well, if it takes that time so be it. We need to get it right. Btw, I  
think the vocabulary translations belong to the classes they are  
declared in, rather than in a central file.

- Bert -


657 Protocols.pot
218 Morphic-Kernel.pot
181 Morphic-Scripting.pot
144 System.pot
137 Sound.pot
119 Morphic-Experimental.pot
101 Morphic-Worlds.pot
90 Morphic-Books.pot
80 Morphic-Widgets.pot
76 Morphic-Stacks.pot
71 Tools.pot
71 Morphic-Basic.pot
70 Morphic-Games.pot
68 Kernel.pot
54 Connectors.pot
52 Scamper.pot
52 Multilingual.pot
49 Movies.pot
47 Morphic-Navigators.pot
45 Morphic-Windows.pot
44 Morphic-Flaps.pot
41 Morphic-Mentoring.pot
40 ConnectorsShapes.pot
39 VideoForSqueak.pot
39 ConnectorsTools.pot
37 Morphic-Demo.pot
28 Balloon.pot
24 Morphic-Scripting Tiles.pot
23 Morphic-Support.pot
18 WS.pot
17 Sugar.pot
14 Morphic-PartsBin.pot
14 Morphic-Components.pot
13 Morphic-Palettes.pot
13 Morphic-Menus.pot
13 Graphics.pot
13 EToys.pot
11 StarSqueak.pot
8 Morphic-GeeMail.pot
8 ConnectorsText.pot
7 Nebraska.pot
7 Collections.pot
6 Network.pot
5 Morphic-Undo.pot
5 Morphic-Buttons.pot
4 ST80.pot
4 Proxy.pot
3 ProjectsRepositoryClient.pot
3 Morphic-Text Support.pot
2 Morphic-Scripting Support.pot
2 Morphic-Postscript Canvases.pot
2 Morphic-PDA.pot
2 BroomMorphs.pot