XYplorer Beta Club

why not create a scripted translation on demand thru all the free online translation that exist (google translation)

I think relying on machine translation would be a disaster for such a technical subject. There are lengthy threads on this forum going back and forth over the exact wording to use for some features. Could you imagine what Google would do with code snippets.

But who knows?

Spanish speakers can judge for themselves
http://translate.google.com.au/translat ... =&ie=UTF-8

And in German
http://translate.google.com.au/translat ... =&ie=UTF-8

OK: it's some years back, and I didn't try since then.

But once I read some English page about winzip, and had heard about some (google?) translate - so I translated the winzip page to German.
I remember after this I was lying under my desk, laughing and crying, and some colleagues had to save me.

Stumbled across someone mentioning the translation efforts going on at Mozilla and they gave me this link: https://localize.mozilla.org/

On the surface it looks like a system very similar to GetTranslation's but it's an open-source product, Pootle.
Just in case you wanted to host your own - though it looks like it's got quite the list of prerequisites and they're all Python-based, which might scare you off of this one.

Thanks for the info. Still in meditation mode...

Some thoughts...

I saw a bit of demand for a multilingual version. When I showed XYplorer to other people one of the first questions was always, does it exist in italian? well for completeness most also said, for my use I don't need it, Explorer is enough for me

I love my language, however I often use software in english even if a translation is available. Why? because of quality, most of translations are half-backed, ugly, untested, messed things made without love and care.

The GUI will require work because english is very compact space wise and I happen to see a lot of software with ugly clipped text everywhere.

To have a quality translation is very very hard. Most (non professional) translators understimate the work or make an half-backed... see before

Translators will see things differently and coordination of work between them is difficult. A couple of real life examples I took part in: a) the person in charge of the translation was inadequate, translation had to be approved by him but his language knowledge was like of a three years old. b) there wasn't a specific leader, all translators were on the same level, so it may happen that they start an ego driven fight changing each other work, this is the risk of a community collaboration.

ale wrote:Some thoughts...

I saw a bit of demand for a multilingual version. When I showed XYplorer to other people one of the first questions was always, does it exist in italian? well for completeness most also said, for my use I don't need it, Explorer is enough for me

I love my language, however I often use software in english even if a translation is available. Why? because of quality, most of translations are half-backed, ugly, untested, messed things made without love and care.

The GUI will require work because english is very compact space wise and I happen to see a lot of software with ugly clipped text everywhere.

To have a quality translation is very very hard. Most (non professional) translators understimate the work or make an half-backed... see before

Translators will see things differently and coordination of work between them is difficult. A couple of real life examples I took part in: a) the person in charge of the translation was inadequate, translation had to be approved by him but his language knowledge was like of a three years old. b) there wasn't a specific leader, all translators were on the same level, so it may happen that they start an ego driven fight changing each other work, this is the risk of a community collaboration.

Fully agreed.

I'm thinking about it all the time and my current state-of-the-meditation is: I will do it but only for German. Germany is a big market, the Germans don't like English software, and German is my native language. Sorry for the rest of the world, but ale summed up the reasons above...

admin wrote: I will do it but only for German. Germany is a big market, the Germans don't like English software, and German is my native language. Sorry for the rest of the world, but ale summed up the reasons above...

I would agree that makes sense from a business POV but would expect you'd make code/design provisions to add a few other major languages at some point later, like maybe French (they also seem to dislike English, it seems) and Spanish...I would expect that having a total of maybe a max of 6 key languages would cover enough of the market and would also mean more people available to assist.

I'd see what frequency of requests come from the various languages and use that to determine what might be most worthwhile to add after German...a lot of websites have choices of 3-4 languages only and that appears to work so XY could do same.

admin wrote:I will do it but only for German

That seems for me (French man) a good middle solution. So I presume that you will be the single translator, no need to have a big machinery to translate. And so the translation will be perfect, even more than perfect because Geman is probably your mother tongue.
And more, so we can perhaps have new features regurlarly like before

jjk wrote:

admin wrote:I will do it but only for German

That seems for me (French man) a good middle solution. So I presume that you will be the single translator, no need to have a big machinery to translate. And so the translation will be perfect, even more than perfect because Geman is probably your mother tongue.
And more, so we can perhaps have new features regurlarly like before

Opening the app for German will also open it for any other language. The question will be only which language I will allow. If you have a good french translation it would take me 10 seconds to add French to the "allowed" languages. That's my currrent plan.

admin wrote:Opening the app for German will also open it for any other language. The question will be only which language I will allow. If you have a good french translation it would take me 10 seconds to add French to the "allowed" languages. That's my currrent plan.

Reading the topics from this afternoon I'd have said exactly the same. I think that's the best solution for the moment. Even while doing this job you might learn more for future decisions.

Just to say: there is one level more of freedom! Because, as I interpret your words, you are especially thinking about XY itself. This has the highest demand for correctness and timing dependency.
But there is another part: help in it's internal form, and (even more freedom) in the pdf. As these don't have the restrictions of fitting the program (in means of field-length etc.) they are more independent. And the pdf is even more independent, as it tells "I'm version 11.00" - so everybody can imagine more or less differences if the current XY is 12.30 (This wouldn't be fine for the internal help, and impossible e.g. for the names of new options inside XY code.)
So I think a Russian (or whatever) translation of the help pdf could be done anytime, referring to the original English XY-commands, and referring to the XY-version it is made for.
OK: this would make a demand for you to make a kind of change-log for changes in help - to enable a translator to update the translation without searching for each change...

admin wrote:German is a very clumsy language which needs lots of space, comparable only to French I think.

Haha, I (as a translator for a couple of things into German) even manage to make the translations shorter than the original English strings. It is all a matter of creativity.
... Too bad I am not fluent enough in other, non-ancient languages. Translating with having to look up every second word is not really mine...

Hi Don!

I have not seen this thread.
You know that I have translated your program into Russian a long time ago. I also translated a half of Help file.
If you give me the file for localization I will fill it (i.e. I translate it). Can begin with me.
I know all difficulties associated with the translate of your program, and about which you probably don't suspect.
Translation it very much not difficult. It is difficult to know where that lies and after which dialog I can see a string for the translation. Only then not "blind" translation is possible.
I will help you.

admin wrote:The first step for me is to "open up" the app for injection of *.lng file data. This will take maybe 4 months. Hard to say. I'll keep you informed. Only when this step is completed the translators can begin with their work.

I think I can help you with the .lng file itself. You know my e-mail adress. And wir can kommunizieren auf Deutsche Sprache.

DmFedorov wrote:Hi Don!

I have not seen this thread.
You know that I have translated your program into Russian a long time ago. I also translated a half of Help file.
If you give me the file for localization I will fill it (i.e. I translate it). Can begin with me.
I know all difficulties associated with the translate of your program, and about which you probably don't suspect.
Translation it very much not difficult. It is difficult to know where that lies and after which dialog I can see a string for the translation. Only then not "blind" translation is possible.
I will help you.

admin wrote:The first step for me is to "open up" the app for injection of *.lng file data. This will take maybe 4 months. Hard to say. I'll keep you informed. Only when this step is completed the translators can begin with their work.

I think I can help you with the .lng file itself. You know my e-mail adress. And wir can kommunizieren auf Deutsche Sprache.

Thanks for the offer.

tux. wrote:Haha, I (as a translator for a couple of things into German) even manage to make the translations shorter than the original English strings. It is all a matter of creativity.

You are absolutely right.

I did help to translate some other projects too and don't really understand the issue here. There are so many free or low priced applications which have other language files than English. How do they do that? By help of the community. Why not here too? Warum nicht, lieber Donald?

Karl M wrote:

tux. wrote:Haha, I (as a translator for a couple of things into German) even manage to make the translations shorter than the original English strings. It is all a matter of creativity.

You are absolutely right.

I did help to translate some other projects too and don't really understand the issue here. There are so many free or low priced applications which have other language files than English. How do they do that? By help of the community. Why not here too? Warum nicht, lieber Donald?

Darum nicht, lieber Karl: http://www.xyplorer.com/xyfc/viewtopic. ... 237#p75237