Hi Jeroen, all,
in the GRASS development, we are facing essentially the same problem.
We have some translation efforts ongoing:
http://grass.itc.it/grass62/i18n.php#statistics
http://grass.itc.it/devel/i18n.php#statistics
but no Web based translation system. I was suggesting to OSGeo
last year, to establish a centralized system for all projects but that
times our infrastructure wasn't ready. In 2007, this might be easier.
I found
http://www.dotmon.com/kartouche/
there might be more.
There was a problem with Launchpad: from their Web pages, Launchpad
claimed to take the copyright of the translated messages which is
not acceptable by the GRASS team. I was discussing with someone
from Launchpad, the person told me that this wasn't the case but
I didn't manage to make them a clear statement on their pages last
year:
http://grass.itc.it/pipermail/translations/2006-June/000214.html
http://grass.itc.it/pipermail/translations/2006-December/000246.html
I just checked now, it seems that something has happened:
https://translations.launchpad.net/legal
But " ... In addition, the translator grants to Canonical Ltd the right
to publish the translation and use the translation in other
software packages under their license."
I am not sure if this is GPL compliant (GRASS is GPL). In any case,
I recommend to study their license carefully.
So, maybe we can push for an OSGeo infrastructure.
Best
Markus
PS: I guess my mail to geonetwork-devel gets trapped...
On 7/17/07, Jeroen Ticheler <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Hi all,
In GeoNetwork opensource we deal with localization in a pretty
trivial manner. We have XML documents that contain all strings we
use. The element names in the string files are common across
languages while the content in the elements are localized. For example:
English:
<strings>
<about>About</about>
<abstract>Abstract</abstract>
<accept>Accept</accept>
<add>add</add>
<addNewMetadata>Add new metadata</addNewMetadata>
</strings>
Arabic:
<strings>
<about>عن البرنامج</about>
<abstract>مقدمة</abstract>
<accept>قبول</accept>
<add>إضافة</add>
<addNewMetadata>بيانات أساسية Metadata جديدة</
addNewMetadata>
</strings>
etc..
The content in the XML elements can also be HTML or contain
attributes etc...
Depending on the language selected, a different language file is used.
The problem:
With the expanding number of languages it becomes more problematic to
keep all language files synchronized. It also is not trivial what
strings have become obsolete, causing people to translate text that
actually is not used anymore.
The solution:
Well, this is where we can use some ideas :-)
- I've been looking at gettext format, noting that also Open Office
uses that format with encoded XML content. A system like Launchpad's
Translations ( https://translations.launchpad.net/ ) could than be
used. We might need something to extract the strings from our XSLT
and also to build the string files in XML format from the po files.
- A custom web based database application could be used (build!?
something existing!?) to store an identifier and than all different
translations for the default string. This could provide feedback on
if a string is deprecated and what the status of a translation is. It
would probably also need some export mechanism to generate the static
language files.
There are probably other ways. i am curious to hear people's
experiences and possible directions toward good solutions.
Looking forward to useful suggestions,
Ciao,
Jeroen
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