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posted by NCommander on Tuesday May 19 2015, @10:00AM   Printer-friendly
from the translators-will-be-wanted dept.

As the dev cycle for the first release of rehash winds down (one remaining bug before we're ready to deploy), I've turned my attention another large site-related project, specifically the possibility of internationalizing and localizing the site. Internationalizing a very large legacy codebase is a lot of work, and I want to gauge interest. For clarification, this work would translate the UI, and the site interface itself, and not the articles. Historically, I'm aware of two successful translation project, BarraPunto, and Slashdot.JP. However, both of those projects did so by simply rewriting the templates in their native language instead of using a more flexible system that would allow for dynamic processing.

After a few hours of cursing, I was successful in modifying rehash to use Locale::Maketext::Lexicon, and load translations dynamically from gettext when a template is loaded. The practical upshot is that if I continue with this effort, we will be able to import all the static strings in rehash, and translate them through any service that can handle standard gettext POT files (such as Launchpad Rosetta), then have rehash load the specific language on the fly depending on a user's settings, or their browsers preferences. This also has the benefit that translators would only require a minimal amount of HTML knowledge would be required to successfully translate rehash.

What I want to know is the following:

  • Is there significant interest to prioritize this project?
  • Are there enough people who are willing to engage in translating rehash to their native language?
  • Assuming there is a successful translation committed and launched, would people be interested in running a version of SN in their own native language?

As long as the first two answers are yes, I'll push to get a localized codebase in place for the next rehash development cycle (likely landing in July or August). Please note there is a *lot* of strings to be translated, I'm expecting upwards of a couple thousand once I've finished scrubbing through all the templates and libraries. If you are interested in this, please note your native language below, and I'll get in contact with you once we're ready to start doing translation work.

Just to show that this is indeed possible, here's the output of the generate-pot-files script, with the few templates I've gone through:

slashlithium~/src/rehash-ncommander$ bin/generate-pot-files
 * themes/default/templates/about;about;default
   - Total strings extracted : 21
 * themes/default/templates/admin;menu;default
   - Total strings extracted : 7
 * themes/default/templates/articlemoved;misc;default
   - Total strings extracted : 3
 * themes/default/templates/bannedtext_ipid;misc;default
   - Total strings extracted : 2
 * themes/default/templates/bannedtext_palm;misc;default
   - Total strings extracted : 2
 * themes/default/templates/main;404;default
   - Total strings extracted : 11
READING PO FILE : i18n/rehash.pot
WRITING PO FILE : ./i18n/rehash.pot
DONE
 
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  • (Score: 2) by janrinok on Tuesday May 19 2015, @02:23PM

    by janrinok (52) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday May 19 2015, @02:23PM (#185070) Journal
    There are much higher priorities that we should be addressing before we begin to worry about internationalization. If you have insufficient coding to keep you busy then maybe invest some time in looking at the problem but, until then, I think that we would be better served by using your talents (and those of the other devs) on other bugs and site enhancements. Just my €0.02.
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  • (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday May 19 2015, @03:15PM

    by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Tuesday May 19 2015, @03:15PM (#185085) Homepage
    Reducing server load such that fewer virtual machines are required, and thus costs, seems like the obvious first focus. Added smarts of passing pages through an additional filter for rewriting languages sounds like an obvious step in the other direction.

    Perfection is not achieved not when there are no more features to add, but when there's no more bloat that needs stripping away.
    --
    Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 20 2015, @04:33AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 20 2015, @04:33AM (#185302)

    absolutely!

    i'd much rather have a way to show new comments on an article since the last time i read it *without* having to change the sort order.

    in fact how about an "Ask Soylent" post, along the lines of...

    The devs are going to have some time available soon, what ONE feature would you like to see implemented that would encourage you to contribute more to discussions?