Feature proposal: Community Translation Tool

[Michael Stone]

On Wed, Nov 26, 2008 at 07:13:48PM -0500, Paul W. Frields wrote:
>On Thu, Nov 27, 2008 at 12:55:04AM +0100, Kevin Kofler wrote:
>> Christoph Höger wrote:
>> > I would like to make that process automagic by providing
>> > a) a simple app that allows users to make a "one string" contribution
>> > b) write a backend, that would store all proposals and update all .po
>> > files fedora has on a regular basis and send the generated patches
>> > upstream or to a fedora translator.
>> 
>> Isn't that what Transifex is about?
>
>Transifex is indeed all about making translations easier to
>contribute.  It also has a command-line client and libraries under
>development, so it would be completely plausible for someone to write
>a "l10n-buddy" that could be pointed at a GUI to enable one-off
>translations, and have them transmitted to transifex for filing in the
>upstream repository.
>
>Christoph, you should absolutely get in touch with the Transifex
>developers for more information and to volunteer to help with this
>piece.  cc'ing Dimitris for good measure.

Enabling better translation workflows, especially for people who are
only locally connected (i.e. who participate in local networks but who
have no regular internet access) is a big deal for OLPC/SugarLabs
because we're obligated by our mission to bring our software to people
in regions with many languages and to empower those people, as best we
can, to adapt our software to suit their needs. 

To this end, Scott Ananian gave a talk on a 'click to translate' [1, 2]
technology that he has prototyped for us at last week's SugarCamp [3].
This technology and the ideas underlying it may be of particular
interesting to readers of this thread.

Regards,

Michael

[1]: http://sugarlabs.org/wiki/images/0/00/Sugarcamp-cscott-i18n.pdf
[2]: http://dev.laptop.org/git/users/cscott/click2trans
[3]: http://sugarlabs.org/go/Sugarcamp