> I read the thread and looked at your example. While I don't know the
> translation tools, I find that what you propose is very well thought.
> If I'm not mistaken, it is not too intrusive: it has nearly no impact on
> the English version, which remains the reference version.
>
That's the idea, to keep the material separated without affecting each
other while showing it all in the website.

> Looking for possible issues, with my current understanding, here are
> already a few questions:
>
> - I've seen some commits about using a jekyll theme. Is this independent
> from the translation aspects?
>
The theme is independent from the translations - except that now the theme
also has support for them. I had to modify some of the permlinks in the
translated repository manually so there were no conflicts, for example,
between `/conduct/` in one language and the other. In my todo list I have
to create a list of checks (whether manually or automated) for the
translator and editor to check that certain things like the permlinks are
properly filled. So, with the current setup, in the Spanish translation I
would need to have the permlink as `/es/condcut/`.

> - does the process require that translators know how to use submodules
> properly?
>
Not at all. The translators will need to clone the i18n repository, and
follow from step 3 in the readme
<https://github.com/swcarpentry-i18n/i18n/blob/master/README.md>. i.e.,
create a new file: po/lesson_name.language.po, open it with a translation
tool, translate, save, create pull request with that new file. For example
#4 <https://github.com/swcarpentry-i18n/i18n/pull/4>
The maintainer of this repository will have to add new lessons as
submodules once and update them as new versions are released. If I'm the
maintainer I have no problems keeping this controlled.

> - ^ if yes, is it easy to "export/import" something so that a translator
> can work without much git knowledge?
>
There's even the possibility to integrate this with some webtools that
allow for collaborative translations. We've tried them before in the
carpentries without much success, however then we didn't have the po files.
Now with them they could be a  more pleasant experience and we could
attract translators that don't need much technical knowledge. However,
after talking with multiple translators from different communities they
seem to dislike these tools. Once I have the basic infrastructure working
so people, I will look into weblate and transifex again.

> - could this be tweaked to leave the English version completely untouched
> (even no submodules)?
>   (especially, if we build the lessons on an integration server)
>
The submodules are needed at the moment for the gh pages normal generation
of a website using Jekyll and my theme to work in it. If we want to get
away of the gh-pages automated generation by github and doing it via an
external source (e.g., travis) then we could build the basic infrastructure
without need of submodules. However we would need to keep somehow a file
tracking the information of which revision should go with which revision on
the different languages. In a way we would be almost reinventing what
submodule does. Note that with submodules don't get pulled when cloning a
repository. So it shouldn't get much in the middle of people working with
the lesson.

On the other hand, an advantage of doing it without github-pages is that we
can install plugins and we could have the hacks I've done in the theme to
include other languages in a more elegant way... Sadly I don't have the
time to learn ruby and the interface with Jekyll to do so.


>   (there has been discussions about people preferring not to use the
> latest gh-pages for teaching, and rather use more stable releases [1] to
> avoid last-minute surprises),
>
These should be lessons we should be aiming for in the translations, the
one that has been already released. In an ideal world, we could have an
schedule of release, where the last two weeks before the release there's no
changes allowed in the release candidate lesson and the translators have
that period to focus on getting the most of it translated, so that the
pages on the release show also the other languages.

> Thanks for the great work.
>
:) Thanks

David

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