[Zope-CMF] How to translate CMF, first summary

Chris McDonough chrism@digicool.com
Sat, 30 Jun 2001 17:24:14 -0400


This is really interesting, thanks for this analysis!

On Sat, 30 Jun 2001 14:57:24 +0200
 "Robert Rottermann" <robert@redcor.ch> wrote:
> Zopistas dieser Welt, seid gegrüsst
> bzw. noch internationaler
> Hoi zäme
> (which is Swiss German)
> 
> Paragraphs in this post:
> 
> Summary
> What I learned translating CMF
> What is missing
> Conclusion and whish list
> How to get the German translation
> 
> Summary (with a bias)
> ---------
> I would like to give a short summary on my request for
> comment re
> translating CMF to non English languages.
> I did get quite a number of answers. Most of them talking
> about the merits
> of the divers tools existing in the community.
> 
> There were also some statements regarding the advantage
> of translating
> sentences versus translating screens. The main argument
> was that translating
> sentences helps to avoid translating the same sentence
> more than once.
> My points against this reasoning (stemming from my
> experience with preparing
> the translation of many non Zope programs) is that not so
> many sentences are
> repeated.
> What is repeated heavily are single words like 'private'
> or 'download'. Or
> quasy words like 'Please enter an ID'.
> Here an automatic translation makes sense.
> However such a translation has its difficulties. For
> instance in German
> adverbs change slightly according to their declination
> (something an English
> speaker hardly is used to). EG the word 'private'
> translates to 'privat' or
> to 'privaten' or 'privatem' according to its usage. Not
> using the correct
> declination makes for clumsy reading. Luckily it is often
> possible to alter
> the wording of a sentence to improve the quality of the
> translation without
> changing its meaning. Since a sentence often only exists
> in the perception
> of the user when she looks at the rendered screen but not
> in the HTML-code
> itself such a screen probably must be translated as a
> whole.
> 
> A lesson learned from the doomed translation of former
> Zope versions is that
> it is impossible to have Zope translated. It is just a
> target that is moving
> to quickly to be able to keep in sync.
> 
> Next to that I believe such a translation would be just
> plain wrong. We do
> not need a translated Zope, we need translated products.
> And since we can not expect that every webmaster
> potentially willing to use
> Zope is proficient enough with English to dare to use a
> "Monster" she has
> difficulties to understand we need good books and Howtos
> in many languages.
> 
> Why do we need translated products? It is what the "end
> user" sees. That
> means we need CMF and Blark and co translated but other
> products just adding
> to the Zope core functionality can remain untranslated to
> the end of the
> universe (and back of course).
> 
> What I learned translating CMF to German
> -------------------------------------------
> We (my company) are starting to use CMF as a tool for our
> customers. We
> therefore have to translate it (to German an French).
> We have done that (only German) and have been trying to
> do it in a way that
> helps with adaptation to further developement.
> 
> This is what we learned:
> 
> English artefacts showing up on the users screen stem
> from divers sources:
> 
> - DTML which is skinable.
>     These we copied to new directories and did translate
> them as a whole.
> - DTML which is not skinable (in CMFCore) we left
> untranslated (yet)
> - Toolbox-entries and status-info
>     We added a python script in one of the skin
> directories (content_int)
> named menuTranslator.py which is in fact a dictionary
> doing the translation.
> Utterly primitive, can be adapted at will.
> - portal_types descriptions
>     created a python script to translate them
> (translateMessage.py)
> - hardcoded strings like the content of a members
> index_html
>     have not yet done anything with it
> - Error messages
>     very many messages
> 
> What is missing
> ---------------
> My experience with translating software shows that is
> critically important
> to automate the flow of bug fixes to all languages.
> I do not have an answer yet to this problem. I will try
> to pack all
> languages into one single file and provide tools to
> unpack the English
> original and diff it against an update. We will see how
> viable that is when
> CMF 1.2 hits the streets.
> 
> Conclusion:
> ------------
> Next to the DTML-translation very few adaptations have to
> be made to the CMF
> core to take out most of the pain translating it to
> languages spoken by
> people like you and me (provided you live in Switzerland
> or nearby).
> I implore the CMF team to adapt the CMF source with the
> easy changes I
> outlined above. This would allow to maintain translated
> versions of CMF
> which not only would help many Zope aficionado but could
> build the base for
> Howtos and other supporting material for non English
> speaker.
> 
> 
> How to get the German translation
> -----------------------------------
> Since the German translation is yet a moving target in
> itself I have put it
> onto one of our servers from where you can get the most
> actual version (if
> such a thing exists at all)
> server:         suse1.aemmenet.ch
> user:            IloveZope
> password:    Ireallydo
> cvs -d :pserver:IloveZope@suse1.aemmenet.ch:/home/redman
> login
> password: Ireallydo
> cvs -d :pserver:IloveZope@suse1.aemmenet.ch:/home/redman
> co CMF_int
> 
> if you do not like to commit yourself yet you can
> substitute both user and
> password with anonymous.
> 
> If somebody likes to have update access to the repository
> just tell me.
> 
> Robert
> 
> 
> 
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