[Localization] Web site .po files in Pootle?

Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen at gmail.com
Fri Jan 11 06:36:34 EST 2008


Hoi,
Pootle is only one tool that can be used by translators. Particularly
professional tools have their own tools to do this work. Localising in a web
interface takes substantially more time then working off line. When you are
not working with professionals, it makes sense to optimise an environment
that is best suited for the community involved. I have hear many translators
resent projects like Pootle because they cannot benefit from their machine
translations. I know translators that refuse to work online; as it is not
efficient for them the cost is too high.

For MediaWiki, the localisation is done in BetaWiki<http://translatewiki.org/>.
This is an environment optimised for the MediaWiki community. Its software
has become quite sophisticated and includes management tools for the
transfer to the MediaWiki SVN. It is helping the localisation of MediaWiki
really well. Currently there are many more
languages<http://translatewiki.net/wiki/Translating:Group_statistics>supported
in BetaWiki then in Pootle. For professional translators we have
an export in the "gettext" format, it includes both the to be translated
text, the translated text and usage information. This can be imported in
tools like OmegaT, a professional translation tool licensed under the GPL.

The biggest problem for many of the less resourced languages is not
localisation. It is recognition. It is not possible in any tool that I know
off to indicate all the written languages that are recognised languages
according to the ISO-639-3. The consequence is that you cannot even indicate
from within your tooling that you are writing your own language.
Consequently much of the Internet provides META information that is
completely wrong. It is so bad that you can nor rely on meta data to know
what language is used. Sorry for this rant :) but if you are interested in
solving this issue please contact me.

Thanks,
     Gerard

On Jan 11, 2008 12:11 PM, Alexander Todorov <atodorov at redhat.com> wrote:

> Good afternoon,
> I was wondering why don't wiki/web site translations go in Pootle?
> Is there some technical issue preventing this?
> IMO this will lead to a standardized work flow for translators, e.g.
> want to translate -> go to Pootle.
>
> Thanks,
> Alexander.
> _______________________________________________
> Localization mailing list
> Localization at lists.laptop.org
> http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/localization
>
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