Last modified: 2009-07-14 18:23:48 UTC
What is " Açai Beta ", and how should it be internationalized? Please consider using the "qqq" pseudo language code so as to leave explanatory notes to translators. Apparently, at least " Açai " is not English. Thus, it should be marked as such in the appropriate messages, e.g. using markup like <span lang="tr">Açai Beta</span> (or whichever other language is was taken from) See also: http://www.mediawiki.org/w/index.php?title=Internationalisation#Expect_untranslated_words There are many messages that look like complete sentences. Some having question marks at their ends, but most lacking terminal punctuation. If they are true sentences, please terminate them with a full stop for clarity. See also: http://www.mediawiki.org/w/index.php?title=Internationalisation#Use_full_stops " Açai Beta ", in the English messages, is sometimes used with a definite article, such as " the Açai Beta " in MediaWiki:Optin-survey-question-likedislike , and sometimes not. This makes messages hard to translate. One does not know, is this a name, a denomination, a thing, a product, or what else. Translations may have to be different for either of those, and articles cannot always be used inconsistently, as you do in English. Thank you.
I'll get to fixing the inconsistencies you reported later today, as well as adding some qqq messages where I think they might be useful. For now, I can at least tell you that "Açai" is just the name of our release (taken from the fruit açai) and should not be translated. "Beta" means the software development stage between experimental and production-ready.
Per in-office discussion yesterday the label will probably be something more like "Try our new look!" rather than using the internal release code name. :)
(In reply to comment #2) > Per in-office discussion yesterday the label will probably be something more > like "Try our new look!" rather than using the internal release code name. :) > Right. This should be decided as soon as possible, because the translators need time to translate it as well.
Thank you. The palm tree, and its fruit, seem to originate from Portuguese. There is another small problem. Some messages refer to the "top right" of the screen, from user view. While current CSS are not (yet) capable to virtualise top-bottom relations, they do virtualize right-left order. Whether or not something is shown at the right end or at the left end of the window depends, at the moment & when it is well done, only on the wiki directionality - but there is a gadget that allows users to select their own directionality, and true multilinguality is inevitably going to come and will make directionality dependant on user preferences for those wikis wanting it, not taking away the ability to use dynamic DOM access to alter everything once a page has been sent to a client. Thus, what we needed and currently do not have, was a way to make a decision _in_ _system_ _messages_ based on the directionality of the page being rendered. While it is trivial and easily implemented to have something like: "This is written {{DIR:left-to-right|right-to-left}}." based upon wiki directionality, it is less obvious how to do it in the most general cases. Likely, two such functions are needed: - one referring to the page layout, and - another referring to the innermost surrounding CSS block element of the function call. Both should be using CSS magic so as to accomodate dynamic changes at the client side. Functions like these have been suggested seveal times. Maybe, this could be the time to implement at least the first one.
(In reply to comment #4) > Thank you. > > The palm tree, and its fruit, seem to originate from Portuguese. > > There is another small problem. Some messages refer to the > "top right" of the screen, from user view. While current CSS are not > (yet) capable to virtualise top-bottom relations, they do virtualize > right-left order. Whether or not something is shown at the right end or at the > left end of the window depends, at the moment & when > it is well done, only on the wiki directionality - but there is a > gadget that allows users to select their own directionality, and > true multilinguality is inevitably going to come and will make > directionality dependant on user preferences for those wikis wanting > it, not taking away the ability to use dynamic DOM access to alter > everything once a page has been sent to a client. > > Thus, what we needed and currently do not have, was a way to make a > decision _in_ _system_ _messages_ based on the directionality of the > page being rendered. While it is trivial and easily implemented > to have something like: > "This is written {{DIR:left-to-right|right-to-left}}." > based upon wiki directionality, it is less obvious how to do it in > the most general cases. Likely, two such functions are needed: > - one referring to the page layout, and > - another referring to the innermost surrounding CSS block element of > the function call. > Both should be using CSS magic so as to accomodate dynamic changes at > the client side. > Functions like these have been suggested seveal times. > Maybe, this could be the time to implement at least the first one. > I know about this issue, which is why I removed the word "right", so it now simply refers to the top of the screen. On lower resolutions, it's more like top middle anyway, because of the width of the links to the right of it (in LTR that is). I've added periods where appropriate, but a lot of sentences are things that shouldn't end in periods, such as button captions. Documenting these as such in qqq, will commit shortly.
(In reply to comment #2) > the label will probably be something more like "Try our new look!" rather than using the internal release code name. :) FYI: I have not counted them, but at the time of this writing I have seen some 200 to 300 or maybe more translations having been made to the (roughly 2 dozen) languages that I have shown in translatewiki.net while I translate. There are about 20+ messages having " Açai Beta " at the moment. Committing new / altered messages will likely cause translators to start working on them within few hours only. Should we have a mechanism saying "Do not translate yet, this message is likely unstable"?
(In reply to comment #6) > (In reply to comment #2) > > the label will probably be something more like "Try our new look!" rather than using the internal release code name. :) > > FYI: I have not counted them, but at the time of this writing I have seen some > 200 to 300 or maybe more translations having been made to the (roughly 2 dozen) > languages that I have shown in translatewiki.net while I translate. There are > about 20+ messages having " Açai Beta " at the moment. Committing new / > altered messages will likely cause translators to start working on them within > few hours only. > > Should we have a mechanism saying "Do not translate yet, this message is likely > unstable"? > I told Siebrand the entire extension was unstable in terms of messages, but he didn't seem to care. Committed my changes in r53234
Please replace "Açai Beta" with "Beta" to remove the confusion for localization and be simple for future releases. We apologize for the revision after the translation had started. We weren't final on the texts yet. I agreewith Purodha that if there are way for us to flag the translation strings that they are not ready to be localized, it will be helpful for both development and translation communities.
I made a note at http://translatewiki.net/w/i.php?title=Support&oldid=1303438#Usability_Initiative Purodha
(In reply to comment #8) > Please replace "Açai Beta" with "Beta" to remove the confusion for > localization and be simple for future releases. Done in r53250
