Translation

How to use this page

 * Please include yourself in the Team.
 * Then look at some of the Priorities and work on that.
 * In order to work you need an account at the wiki.
 * Please follow the conventions on naming pages.
 * Special:WantedPages could be useful in looking for articles that have not yet been translated.

Other ways to help with translations
We can see it as a grid: some are interested in lines (one language), some in rows (some domain), some in cells (a specific page for a specific language):
 * Some will want to be part of the Team (see above).
 * Some will be interested in in some specific page for a specific language, not in translations in general.
 * In time, some may even be interested in curating domain dictionaries ("shaft" is not a word I normally use so I don't know what it is in Spanish).

We'll find out as we grow.

Tools and advice

 * http://universalsubtitles.org/ - useful for subtitles, used at (example), now accepts vimeo too.
 * http://piratepad.net - useful for cooperative transcription, with chat window on the side.
 * Google Translator Toolkit - Probably better than piratepad for cooperative (and machine-assisted) translations. Accepted formats include:
 * URL of a file on the web
 * URL of a Wikipedia article
 * URL of a Knol article
 * AdWords Editor Archive (.aea)
 * HTML (.html)
 * Microsoft Word (.doc)
 * OpenDocument (.odt)
 * Text (.txt)
 * Rich Text (.rtf)
 * SubRip (.srt)
 * SubViewer (.sub)
 * Translators Without Borders
 * http://www.acclaro.com/white-papers/translating-user-assistance-content
 * http://www.omegat.org/en/omegat.html - Java based, features segmentation and a glossary, can import MediaWiki pages

Page Title Convention
We will use the convention described at The Document Foundation Wiki, that is, we should create subpages with the ISO 639-1 code (2-letter language code). See this example:


 * Original page: Main Page
 * French translation: Main Page/fr
 * Portuguese translation: Main Page/pt

(If you take a look at the top of the translated pages, you'll notice that the links to the various language codes are not properly formatted. Can you help fix this?)

Basics rules to create your pages

 * The name of the translated article My Page will be My Page/xx, where xx is the ISO code of the language in lower case.
 * Always insert   at the top of the original English page. It will automatically display the links to all language versions of this page.
 * Always insert   at the top of the translated page, which will automatically display the links to all other language versions of this page.
 * Don't forget to replace Translated Title with the proper translation of the article title.
 * Make sure you are working on the new article and don't accidentally translate the original one.
 * It will automatically add the language category to the pages.
 * When creating a link to another page, use  
 * When including a template, use  
 * Look up difficult terms to translate in the glossaries, and add new terms as appropriate to help the others.

Wiki Translation Priorities

 * 1) Crash course on OSE
 * 2) Get involved
 * 3) Donate
 * 4) OSE Specifications
 * 5) CEB Press Intro
 * 6) FAQ
 * 7) Main Page
 * 8) Template: Featured Page
 * 9) Template: True Fan
 * 10) Template: GVCS List
 * 11) Evolve to freedom
 * 12) Contact us
 * 13) Open Source Micro Factory:
 * 14) Español: es: blog - Open Source Micro Factory
 * 15) Português: pt: blog - Open Source Micro Factory
 * 16) Français: fr: blog - Open Source Micro Factory
 * 17) Russian: ru: blog - Open Source Micro Factory
 * 18) All pages in Category: EN

Questions and suggestions to improve the process
The following are suggestions from translators. They can be explored to streamline the process further for the next translations.


 * Wikipedia shows translations of this page in the left column. But I don't know if normal users are allowed into editing the left column.  The default is leaving a menu of languages at the top of the page.
 * One possibility is to change the Google Translation widget (at the left) so that it takes you to the language-specific subpage if it exists. If it doesn't exist, it would show the machine-generated translation instead.
 * Is it possible to tag a translation as "synchronised with English as of today", so that if the main page in English changes, translators will be aware that the translation needs to be updated too? There's probably some kind of script that can at least run through headings and see that there have or haven't been major changes to the structure of the page.
 * Translators read almost as carefully as implementers, or sometimes even more carefully, and both may detect:
 * Ways to translate something better. These comments should go in the "discussion" page of the translated page.
 * Ambiguities, lack of clarity, unnecessary complexity in wording or phrasing. These comments belong in the "discussion" page of the original page in English, because once they are solved they benefit both the original and the translations.  An extra benefit of writing clearly (and feedback adds to this) is that automatic translation engines will probably produce better results.
 * Links to both "discussion" pages should probably become a standard, with standard phrasing such as "comments about the translation" and "comments about the English page", or better.

Video Translation

 * There's some work done already.
 * See Video translation

(Have you noticed we now have ELEVEN translations for the main video at the front page? IIRC, we initially translated to Portuguese, Spanish and Italian only. Now, we also have Czech, French, Hungarian, Polish, Romanian, Russian, Swedish and Traditional Chinese. THANK YOU ALL who have contributed!)