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[squeak-dev] Status of translations before Squeak 4.0

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Séverin Lemaignan

[squeak-dev] Status of translations before Squeak 4.0

Hello everyone,

I was wondering what was the status of the translation workflow in the
upcoming versions of Squeak? to be more precise, I would like to
update the (far from perfect) French translation from what I did for
the Etoys image, and I'm wondering what is the "procedure". Are we
heading to a "100% gettext" approach like the OLPC one (which seems
very efficient to me)?

Cheers,
Severin

Séverin Lemaignan

[squeak-dev] Re: Status of translations before Squeak 4.0

Hello,

I do a "ping" on this question about the translation workflow, and I
add another one: today in Ubuntu Jaunty, the packaged Squeak image has
only English, German and Spanish. I'm working with teachers and
children in French, and it's a real problem for me. I can of course
give them a special image localized in French, but when teachers are
installing softwares, it's *ways* easier for them to simply go to
<insert here your favorite package manager> and install the "squeak"
package.

Severin

2009/4/28 Séverin Lemaignan <[hidden email]>:

> Hello everyone,
>
> I was wondering what was the status of the translation workflow in the
> upcoming versions of Squeak? to be more precise, I would like to
> update the (far from perfect) French translation from what I did for
> the Etoys image, and I'm wondering what is the "procedure". Are we
> heading to a "100% gettext" approach like the OLPC one (which seems
> very efficient to me)?
>
> Cheers,
> Severin
>

Ian Trudel-2

Re: [squeak-dev] Re: Status of translations before Squeak 4.0

Hello Séverin,

This is really sad nobody has replied to you. I am also concerned by
localization support in Squeak. And it's all true: the French version
isn't that great. It would be easy to port gettext classes from Etoys
to Squeak.

However, one problem with the approach is the lack of support for
categories. It means one gets a big dictionary of system wide
sentences. It's an unfriendly combination with the monolithic design
of gettext. The language editor is also pretty bad, nothing to compare
with, say, POEdit.

We would also have to find a repository to store language files (e.g.
PO gettext files). Anyway, I don't think there is any translation
workflow at all. No plan. No nothing. =)

Ian.
--
http://mecenia.blogspot.com/

Bert Freudenberg

Re: [squeak-dev] Re: Status of translations before Squeak 4.0

On 18.05.2009, at 17:13, Ian Trudel wrote:

> Hello Séverin,
>
> This is really sad nobody has replied to you. I am also concerned by
> localization support in Squeak. And it's all true: the French version
> isn't that great. It would be easy to port gettext classes from Etoys
> to Squeak.

I think so, yes. Also, the Etoys translation covers pretty much the
whole image, including the development tools, so a very large portion
of translation work is already done.

> However, one problem with the approach is the lack of support for
> categories. It means one gets a big dictionary of system wide
> sentences.

Well, actually, it supports per-package (= system category)
translation files. Only if no translation file for a specific category
is found, it falls back to the main translation file.

For Etoys we just decided to not split it (although initially we did)
because having many po files is unwieldy too.

A bigger problem is the still-missing context support. You sometimes
want to translate the same English phrase differently depending on the
context (e.g., "copy" can be a verb or noun) and currently all of
these uses are mashed together.

But despite all the shortcomings it does work and got us a completely
translated app.

> It's an unfriendly combination with the monolithic design
> of gettext. The language editor is also pretty bad, nothing to compare
> with, say, POEdit.

For the PO files you can use any editor you want. The in-image editor
is only for the old translation system.

> We would also have to find a repository to store language files (e.g.
> PO gettext files). Anyway, I don't think there is any translation
> workflow at all. No plan. No nothing. =)

For Etoys we use Sugar Labs' "Pootle" installation:

http://translate.sugarlabs.org/projects/etoys/

It allows to translate online, or upload PO files.

- Bert -

Janko Mivšek

Re: [squeak-dev] Re: Status of translations before Squeak 4.0

In reply to this post by Ian Trudel-2

Hi Ian,

Ian Trudel pravi:

> We would also have to find a repository to store language files (e.g.
> PO gettext files). Anyway, I don't think there is any translation
> workflow at all. No plan. No nothing. =)

There is actually an effort to finish Unicode support underway.
Specially on input and output side while internal Unicode support is
well already.

Working Unicode is namely a basis for any translation support later, IMO.

Janko

--
Janko Mivšek
AIDA/Web
Smalltalk Web Application Server
http://www.aidaweb.si

Séverin Lemaignan

Re: [squeak-dev] Re: Status of translations before Squeak 4.0

In reply to this post by Bert Freudenberg

Thanks a lot for your answers!

>From what I understand, it would be easy enough to set the "gettext
path" as the standard path for translations in Squeak. And it would be
indeed very welcome to rely on Pottle to store the different
translations.

We could use the already existing PO files produced for Etoys (and
concerning the French version, the PO file available on Pottle is much
more recent than the current Squeak translation) and if we can
separate these PO file, we could maybe share a common squeak-base.po
and add a specific etoys.po for the Etoys.

Which steps must be undertaken for the gettext solution to be actually set up?

Cheers,
Severin

On Tue, May 19, 2009 at 03:24, Bert Freudenberg <[hidden email]> wrote:

> On 18.05.2009, at 17:13, Ian Trudel wrote:
>
>> Hello Séverin,
>>
>> This is really sad nobody has replied to you. I am also concerned by
>> localization support in Squeak. And it's all true: the French version
>> isn't that great. It would be easy to port gettext classes from Etoys
>> to Squeak.
>
> I think so, yes. Also, the Etoys translation covers pretty much the whole
> image, including the development tools, so a very large portion of
> translation work is already done.
>
>> However, one problem with the approach is the lack of support for
>> categories. It means one gets a big dictionary of system wide
>> sentences.
>
> Well, actually, it supports per-package (= system category) translation
> files. Only if no translation file for a specific category is found, it
> falls back to the main translation file.
>
> For Etoys we just decided to not split it (although initially we did)
> because having many po files is unwieldy too.
>
> A bigger problem is the still-missing context support. You sometimes want to
> translate the same English phrase differently depending on the context
> (e.g., "copy" can be a verb or noun) and currently all of these uses are
> mashed together.
>
> But despite all the shortcomings it does work and got us a completely
> translated app.
>
>> It's an unfriendly combination with the monolithic design
>> of gettext. The language editor is also pretty bad, nothing to compare
>> with, say, POEdit.
>
> For the PO files you can use any editor you want. The in-image editor is
> only for the old translation system.
>
>> We would also have to find a repository to store language files (e.g.
>> PO gettext files). Anyway, I don't think there is any translation
>> workflow at all. No plan. No nothing. =)
>
>
> For Etoys we use Sugar Labs' "Pootle" installation:
>
> http://translate.sugarlabs.org/projects/etoys/
>
> It allows to translate online, or upload PO files.
>
> - Bert -
>
>
>
>