Author Topic: Suggestion - Improve English Translation  (Read 15788 times)

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Offline duarte.framos

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Suggestion - Improve English Translation
« on: September 08, 2013, 19:30:56 »
Hello everyone, I have mentioned this to Francois before, but I have been thinking about it a little more.

I have recently been working on the Portuguese translation of Ancestris 0.8 Beta, and while doing so I have bumped into some English UI text that I think could use some improvements. Nothing too big, just some occasional typos, inconsistencies, or some tool-tips and help text that look incomplete or could be better explained.
For example I think I saw a few occurrences on "Ancestis" instead of "Ancestris", you have a mix of "gedcom" "Gedcom" "GEDCOM" and even "GedCom" which for consistency sake should all be "GEDCOM" (if you would approve of this), there is a "Save ~As" instead of "Save As" etc.. Stuff that could easily be corrected with a "simple find-and-replace" anyone with computer skills and Trancestris could do, leaving more time for the developers to do the actual lot of work I am sure they already have.

Now I understand this is not an easy thing for a mere non-coding mortal like me to achieve, I've been told I needed access to the sources, and find the correct "Bundle.properties" files and edit them, so I was thinking of a way to make this easy and simple for every one:

1 - How hard would it be to add a new language for translation?

2 - If the previous is easy: Could this language be named something like "English improvements" or "English changes" or something along those lines? Since I believe all new translations start out as the standard English it would be relatively easy for anyone with Trancestris to make small corrections to the existing English texts, then:

3 - How hard would it be for the devs to receive the uploaded new texts through Trancestris like they already do, and match them against existing English UI and review it to approve/disapprove the introduced changes.

4 - If the previous is doable: How hard would it then be find and merge those changes from the translation to the corresponding Bundle.properties files? or if that is too hard

5 - Just simply use the new text strings from the "English Improvements" translation when Ancestris is set to use English instead of the original ones, doing so automatically and transparently to the user.

Now I as I said I am no coder, so I have no idea how hard all this is, if I am dreaming out loud and this is too complex/not worth the trouble I'll just shut up and leave you alone.  :-X
But like a true Open Source Community Project this looked to me like something that would benefit everyone in the community, both developers, by leveraging some work to the community and users that benefit from a better UI. Maybe even have some native English speaker volunteer help with this, I am Portuguese and I believe most people here are French right?

So what do you think?  :)


Offline arvernes

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Re: Suggestion - Improve English Translation
« Reply #1 on: September 08, 2013, 19:46:41 »
Hi,
you have another way to achieve what you want to do. Use Trancestris and ask to translate from English to English. This will create a file named Ancestris_Bundles_en.zip
Of course it's important to validate each sentence of the subdirectory you're working on using Trancestris. Second, as the english properties file you're working on, will be the new source file for other translators, it's important to be very careful with the mods you want to apply.
Third : it's great to help us  ;) Thanks. Francois

Warning: Added on april 23rd, 2018: it is no longer possible to translate english to english using Trancestris. See the message below.
« Last Edit: April 23, 2018, 10:28:40 by arvernes »
Met ’drokfen ket evit teñzorioù va Frankiz !

Offline duarte.framos

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Re: Suggestion - Improve English Translation
« Reply #2 on: September 08, 2013, 20:21:17 »
Wow that sounds exactly like what I meant, guess it is easier than I thought.  :)
Yup I would be very carefull not to do just some "blind Find and replace" which would be prone to errors and possibly break things.

Ok, so if I wanted to submit some proposals right now all I had to do was let Trancestris download a new bundle and make some changes and submit, then you would review the changes on your end to see if you approve of them?

Would you approve of my proposed less drastic changes like unifying the use of "GEDCOM" word and fix that "File>Save ~As" on main Ancestris window and fixing the "Ancestis"
Where would be the best place to ask these questions about changing the UI text? Forum? This post right here? Open up a new post for every change? or perhaps the IRC?

Thanks

Offline arvernes

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Re: Suggestion - Improve English Translation
« Reply #3 on: September 08, 2013, 20:35:19 »
Trancestris is your friend for what you wanna do  ;). Yes
About the proposals, I agree yes, The best place to submit and chat, as long as I'm there, is the IRC. Francois
Met ’drokfen ket evit teñzorioù va Frankiz !

Offline Daniel

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Re : Re: Suggestion - Improve English Translation
« Reply #4 on: September 08, 2013, 20:43:02 »
Hello,

... and fix that "File>Save ~As"

This is not a typo but a feature. the ~ character is used just before the accelerator key used to fire this action from keyboard.

Daniel

Offline duarte.framos

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Re: Suggestion - Improve English Translation
« Reply #5 on: September 08, 2013, 21:04:50 »
This is not a typo but a feature. the ~ character is used just before the accelerator key used to fire this action from keyboard.

Oh right, I guess it is a good thing I asked here then, before screwing anything major up.
Ok then I'll try to submit the changes soon when I get back to translation.
Thanks again guys.


Offline Gemma68se

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Re: Suggestion - Improve English Translation
« Reply #6 on: April 18, 2018, 19:00:02 »
I wonder if you came to a conclusion about the consistency of use of gedcom/Gedcom/GedCOM or GEDCOM.

I can after I am finished with the swedish translations do revision of the english in this respect.

Offline duarte.framos

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Re: Suggestion - Improve English Translation
« Reply #7 on: April 18, 2018, 19:12:38 »

According to Wikipedia - and being an acronym in general -  it should be GEDCOM, all capitalized.



But forgive the offtopic, is Ancestris still actively developed? Haven't received any notifications from this forum in what seems like ages now.


There seemed to have been a huge dip in activity a few years ago after some storm in France a few years ago, if I recall correctly.
After that I was under the impression somehow it had been abandoned, but I may be wrong.


Just wondering if it is worth bothering

Offline arvernes

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Re: Suggestion - Improve English Translation
« Reply #8 on: April 18, 2018, 19:24:47 »
I wonder if you came to a conclusion about the consistency of use of gedcom/Gedcom/GedCOM or GEDCOM.
I do not know which spelling is better. Sometimes, gedcom refers to the gedcom file, so it must be written "gedcom". Sometimes, it refers to the gedcom specs, so the gedcom standard, I guess it should be written in that case as "Gedcom" (it's a kind of Constitution). GedCOM or GEDCOM should be revised, yes.

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I can after I am finished with the swedish translations do revision of the english in this respect.
It's better to send translation from time to time, instead of waiting for the translation to be finished. About the english translation, yes, but it's more difficult, as we can't use Trancestris for it, as it's the main language file (the root language file). It contains codes which would be deleted if one use trancestris, and it would cause big problems ;-) So to revisite the english translation, you have to open the english bundles with a "simple" editor, as notepad (for windows) or gedit (for linux) or jedit (for linux, windows, mac) one by one, and send them, again one by one, if you do changes in it. To fix the english properties files, it's better to ask me first, and I will help to do so.
Again thank  you Ewa (tack så mycket). Francois
Met ’drokfen ket evit teñzorioù va Frankiz !

Offline arvernes

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Re: Suggestion - Improve English Translation
« Reply #9 on: April 18, 2018, 19:35:35 »
According to Wikipedia - and being an acronym in general -  it should be GEDCOM, all capitalized.
But forgive the offtopic, is Ancestris still actively developed? Haven't received any notifications from this forum in what seems like ages now.
?? I guess you have a problem with your settings of the forum. Oh yes, still alive and kicking ;-)

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There seemed to have been a huge dip in activity a few years ago after some storm in France a few years ago, if I recall correctly.
After that I was under the impression somehow it had been abandoned, but I may be wrong.
Yes, you're wrong. Duarte, the portuguese translation is maintained by another portuguese user, and the translation is updated up to 99% ;-)
Now if you want to see the activity on the code itself, take a look there you will be surprised ;-)
http://ancestris-commits-mailing-list.80662.x6.nabble.com/

Quote
Just wondering if it is worth bothering
;-(
Met ’drokfen ket evit teñzorioù va Frankiz !

Offline duarte.framos

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Re: Suggestion - Improve English Translation
« Reply #10 on: April 18, 2018, 19:54:32 »
Apologies, after I finished creating my family tree I have really been out of the loop.
Glad to see this is still going, sorry for taking you for dead


Keep it up, I'll be keeping an eye from now on.  ;D


EDIT:


What is wrong with the forum software? It has been randomly changing my character sizes. See:

Quote
Apologies, after I finished creating my family tree Ihave really been out of the loop.

Maybe it is incompatible with my web browser
« Last Edit: April 18, 2018, 19:58:59 by duarte.framos »

Offline TuxfordC

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Re: Suggestion - Improve English Translation
« Reply #11 on: April 23, 2018, 05:30:38 »
To me a newbie,this has has been an interesting discussion. Yesterday I ventured into the Help pages, to find that the majority were in French. I can read these slowly (with the aid of a dictionary) but decided that as time permits I would translate them into English, using a two step procedure of Machine translation followed by Editing and correction.  A reasonable slice of my working life was spent in writing technical manuals and proof reading similar manuals written by others so I am reasonably familiar with instructional English.   I have noted some syntax errors and a few spelling mistakes in the Help that is already in English and hope to correct this too - eventually.

Have not yet looked at your bundled files, nor discovered what is your preferred format.   I have recently been writing in Lyx and using Open Document for release, both are suitable for editing, ODT probably better in this case.  However, firstly I have to become familiar with Ancentris.

Edit.
Since I wrote this, have been looking at Trancestris and finding that the Linux version is difficult (so far very difficult) to use/extract on the Debian Linux that I use.  Never worry, another day tomorrow might solve it??

Gordon.
« Last Edit: April 23, 2018, 06:58:20 by TuxfordC »

Offline arvernes

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Re: Suggestion - Improve English Translation
« Reply #12 on: April 23, 2018, 07:07:52 »
To me a newbie,this has has been an interesting discussion. Yesterday I ventured into the Help pages, to find that the majority were in French.
We speak here about the internal help of Ancestris, the one accessible using the F1 key.
Yes, that's right, but even the part in french is partly obsolete (if we consider Ancestris v. 0.10 as many improvements have been made since v. 0.9).
The skeleton of the help structure is good, but the help itself should be totally revisited and rewrite.
So instead of writing the help, first in french, then translate it to english, it should be the opposite, the help files should be written in english first, then translated to the other languages. The main language is english, not french.
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I can read these slowly (with the aid of a dictionary) but decided that as time permits I would translate them into English, using a two step procedure of Machine translation followed by Editing and correction.
See above. It's better to write the english help from scratch, then translate it to another language.
Quote
I have noted some syntax errors and a few spelling mistakes in the Help that is already in English and hope to correct this too - eventually.
It would help, yes.
Quote
Have not yet looked at your bundled files, nor discovered what is your preferred format.   I have recently been writing in Lyx and using Open Document for release, both are suitable for editing, ODT probably better in this case.
If I try to summarize how it works, I could say you have three different situations.
1) If you want to translate Ancestris to another language, except english, you have to use Trancestris. It's a fantastic tool, and actually all translators use Trancestris. The information of Trancestris are accessible on our Trac web site.
2) If you want to fix the english properties files, you can't use Trancestris, but a simple editor like Notepad, or Gedit or Jedit (which works for Windows, Linux and MacOs). So if you want to fix the english files (the properties files), it's better to ask me to send them to you one by one. In each file, you have special parameters which must be kept to allow translation to the other languages. This is an example :
OptionsExport/blueprints=Blueprint: {0}
OptionsExport/preferences/gedcoms=Genealogy parameters
OptionsExport/extensions=Extensions
OptionDisplayPanel.jCheckBox1.toolTipText=<html> If this option is checked, when you start Ancestris, it allows you to OR will re-open the windows that were open during the previous<br> Ancestris session. </html>
OptionDisplayPanel.jCheckBox1.text=Remember opened windows
#NOI18N
OptionDisplayPanel.jLabel5.text=
OptionDisplayPanel.jLabel3.text=Window

3) If you want to create or translate (from english to another language) the internal help files, you have to use a simple editor again, as those files are in html language (they are web pages). We have tried to use Open Office (or different html editors), but Oo added multiple codes which make the html pages too loaded, so when I wrote the french ones, I used Jedit (see above). To create the help files, it's better if I send the structure itself, so the files, the subdirectories, etc, that way it's easier, for the one who want to help, to understand how it works, and with the already existing files, it helps a lot.
Quote
However, firstly I have to become familiar with Ancentris.
Yes, absolutely. To be able to write help for a software we must be familiar with it first.
Thank you for your help Gordon. That's great. Francois
Met ’drokfen ket evit teñzorioù va Frankiz !

Offline TuxfordC

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Re: Suggestion - Improve English Translation
« Reply #13 on: April 23, 2018, 22:18:02 »
 I did use Blue Fish for HTML editing and will be interested to see how Jedit compares. Have downloaded the Jedit manual, and am scanning through it but the only way to learn it will be to do some editing - so I would be grateful for some bundled files containing  Ancestris Help material.  These could be emailed to me or if they are available from a source such as GitHub, could download them directly.

Am progressing quite well with Ancestris and have created three - as yet incomplete - genealogies using data transferred from Gramps. A lot to learn, which is why I wish to work with English Help.

Gordon.

PS This is proving to be a long conversation, the 12 hour time difference does not help!

Offline arvernes

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Re: Suggestion - Improve English Translation
« Reply #14 on: April 24, 2018, 05:51:00 »
Hello,
... so I would be grateful for some bundled files containing  Ancestris Help material.  These could be emailed to me or if they are available from a source such as GitHub, could download them directly.
I sent them to you a few minutes ago. It's a 3.6 mega file, I hope it will go through.

Quote
PS This is proving to be a long conversation, the 12 hour time difference does not help!
Oh yes, when it's 5pm for you in New Zealand, it's only 7am for us ;-), Francois
Met ’drokfen ket evit teñzorioù va Frankiz !