Re: [Nuxeo-localizer] easily translate existing website

[Juan David Ibáñez Palomar]

Apologies for replying so late.

For the EuroPytho.org web site I used all the techniques,
and a few more. But I'm not going to go deeper on this,
with your example I understand which the problem is and
can give you an answer, probably not the one you would
like to hear.

You've found the two different solutions available: to use
LocalContent, then the translator has to deal with the
format (the html tags), that's bad; or to use the Message
Catalog, then you have to add all this gettext markup,
that's bad.

The last month there was a discussion in the mailing list
where I showed which is going to be one of the development
paths for Localizer:

http://mail.freesoftware.fsf.org/pipermail/nuxeo-localizer/2002-August/000229.html

Basically, the idea is:

 1. Store the data in LocalContent objects;

 2. Parse the data, extract the sentences and feed a message
    catalog with them;

 3. The translator translates the message catalog (PO files
    for example), without the HTML formatting;

 4. The translated version is automatically generated from the
    translations stored in the message catalog and from the
    original version

The problem is that we're not there yet. And I don't have time
to develop it any time soon.

Another alternative is to try the product called Base18 which
builds on Localizer and follows a similar approach. You can try,
but it's early alpha and depends on the CMF.

My suggestion with the current situation is to use LocalContent
objects and teach the translators to respect the HTML. The other
options, use of MessageCatalog or try Base18 are probably worse.
But that depends on several things: are you already using the CMF?
do you think your translators will learn to respect the HTML markup?
etc..

There's another option, you could pay me (or somebody else) to
implement the features described above right now. If you have a
lot of content to manage this could be the cheaper solution.


Regards,
david


> Part of the website will be redone from scratch.  But an important
> part is a user manual, that is already written, and has source outside
> of html.  From time to time, a new master version of the manual will
> be produced.  Here's the first interesting page of that manual:
>
>    
> http://lilypond.org/src/zope/Documentation/user/out-www/lilypond/First-steps.html
>
> The pages are fairly simplistic, static html, so we *could* translate
> just page by page (putting every page in LocalContent, I guess?).  But
> this raw html is no fun for a translator, and would make the
> translation quite unmaintainable, if a new version of the manual is
> produced.  The other way that I see, is to mark every heading, link
> name, and paragraph.  Then you could simply send the translator a .po
> file, and be better prepared for changes is the master document.
>
> In the case of the above page, something like:
>
>    ...
>    <h3><dtml-var "msg.gettext ('First steps')"</h3>
>
>    <dtml-gettext catalog=msg>
>    <p>We start off by showing how very simple music is entered in
>    LilyPond:  you get a note simply by typing its note name, from
>    <code>a</code> through <code>g</code>. So if you enter
>    </dtml-gettext>
>    <blockquote>
>    <br><pre>c d e f g a b
>    </pre>
>    </blockquote>
>    <dtml-gettext catalog=msg>
>    then the result looks like this:
>    </dtml-gettext>
>    <p>
>    <a href="lily-1452586523.png">
>    <img border=0 src="lily-1452586523.png" alt=[<dtml-var "msg.gettext ('picture of 
> music')">
>    </a><p>
>    </blockquote>
>    <p></p><br><br>
>    
>    <dtml-gettext catalog=msg>
>    <p>We will continue with this format: first we show a snippet of input,
>    then the resulting output.
>    </dtml-gettext>
>    ...
>        
> But how are we going to get all those tags in, and where?  Is there a
> handy tool for that?
>
> Do you tag per paragraph, or use bigger chunk of texts?  For example,
> look at this page:
>
>   
> http://lilypond.org/src/zope/Documentation/user/out-www/lilypond/About-this-manual.html
>
> Where would you put the tags?
>
> Greetings,
> Jan.
>
>  


--
J. David Ibáñez, http://www.j-david.net
Software Engineer / Ingénieur Logiciel / Ingeniero de Software