RE: [Web-erp-developers] Translations

[Rom P. <ro...@pr...>]

Dear Hani and All,

><Translation Central Web Site> - referred as [WS]
><Online Translation Interface> - referred as [TI]
><Translation Approval Administration Interface> - referred as [TAA]
>
>The idea is to create a [WS] (let's say in web-erp website) where the
person
>would edit the [TI] for the desired language. After editing, those
>modifications/inclusions would be available for the Admin to approve in the
>[TAA]. After approved, the new gettext file would be generated and become
>available for everybody to download. Also, when new versions are launched,
>the new not translated text stays in English (assuming that English is the
>default language). So every language gets created at upgrade/update launch
>time. Users from that language that get the update will be alerted about
the
>text not translated and can translate at real time in the [WS]. In this way
>we would have an unified translation effort, where all the users would take
>advantage of the recent translations, what is the main problem of most
>translations all around, the upgrade/update issue. Every time there is a
new
>version the translation gets behind. 

> Ok, so if I understand you correctly you want to build a website to help 
> manage the translation effort. That actually sounds really nice, 
> especially if you make it generic enough that it can be
> used by any other project (not only weberp).  Although it sounds like a 
> lot of work.

Well, it will cost some time, but it will be a nice tool.

> As for the effort in translating it took me and Sherif around 2 weeks 
> (part-time) to go through all
> the files and changing the code so it used the _() convention.
> Initially that function just returned the english key (eg _("Hani") 
> returned Hani ).

I was calculating about a month, but 2 weeks is even better...

> Once the code has been changed there are tools that will automatically 
> locate the strings for you
> and create an empty po file (with the keys that is). You than need to 
> spend sometime cleaning it
> up since you will initially find very similar entries which you can 
> joined into one for example

> Name: , and Name{space}: etc...

Cool!

> Then someone has to go through and translate the strings (again there 
> are some good editors for
> that). This is initially time consuming.

Well, it is always good to check again the files, since everything is human
around here and mistakes can happen...

> There are also tools for merging files from multiple users etc...

> With regards to gettext I found a php based gettext and I adpated OA to 
> check if the default
> php gettext (which uses c code) was not installed I used the pure php 
> version. Most ISP's php
> seem to be compiled with gettext support though.

Yeap, they do.

> Good luck guys

Thank you and best regards,

Rom Pereira