Translating Free Software?

InnerPeace Volunteers asks: "We'd like to translate our free software into other languages besides English. Our total budget for this is 0. Any suggestions on how to get this done?" The hardest part of getting people to translate anything, sometimes, is finding the talent to do it. Once done, it should be fairly easy to break things down into pieces and assign them to each person. Documentation is easy to translate, but how might code be best (re-)designed to make translating the programs internal dialog less of a bear for those working on the project? Is I18N still the best route for a multi-lingual program, or are there better options?

Re:Translating free software. Lesson 1. French.

[Anonymous Coward]

libre logiciel

Lesson 1.1
In French, the adjective usually comes *after* the noun:
e.g. logiciel libre

Therefore my suggestion to the submitter is this: make sure whoever is translating to a language is a native who learned english, and not an english native who learned the foreign language, even if they tell you they can do it. Else you *will* get a "Zero Wing" translation to some degree. I've seen so many awkward translations, trust me, you need a native speaker.

Re:Translating free software. Lesson 1. French.

[philologist]

And that's not even counting the problem you have that where English has one word for "free", but two uses, e.g.

1. The software was free when downloaded off his site.
2. The software is free from any clauses limiting its distribution.

French and many other languages have two words: gratuit and libre.

This serves to remind us that even native speakers have to keep this sort of problem in mind.

What are you translating?

[Oily Tuna]

Your small collection of HTML files [innerpeace.org]???

To be honest, it doesn't look like a very big task apart from the actual english->SomethingElse step. Cliff's comments are correct - but not relevent to what I see on your site. Step 1 is obviously a little note on your homepage [innerpeace.org] asking for volunteers to do the translating.
I'm sure for a few $$$ you could persuade some language students at the local college [unc.edu] to help.

I've been involved with the translation of an HTML based application - commericially and for an international company, so the translation bit was easy - and HTML is a pain to deal with.
It was hard for the translators to distinguish between things that should be translated and things that shouldn't be because the content, the formatting and the scripting is so intertwined. The scripting problems were eased by going the traditional route of splitting localisable strings into a separate file and loading controls dynamically at run time. The solution to the rest was good QA.

Re:What are you translating?

[Katajanmarja]

Assuming you're content with just a native in the language you want to translate to, versus
a native and a professional, you might not even need the money part. You have interesting/fun, open source / GNU-style-free software, and a decent internationalization scheme which allows translators not to mess with code to get their work done? Add a note to various places, like in the 'about..', that you're looking for translators for this and that language, or "any". Last time I had a sudden urge to contribute, I picked up one project I found from SourceForge which was done in a jiffy, and one bigger game which I'm still working on.

My main problem then was that from SF, I found only one which seemed that it might have any interest in a Finnish translation. And with the bigger project outside SF, I knew they wanted localizations but was intimidated by the size of it: "what if my translation isn't good enough for them?"

Try the existing teams

[Otter]

KDE and Gnome (and some other projects, I'm sure) have extensive translation teams. You might want to approach the respective leaders of those teams and see if they'd let you send a call for volunteers to the relevant mailing lists.

Students are the way to go...

[TheAB]

Find a student who is interested, together contact his/her prof, and that student may pull off getting academic credit for a "language internship". That way, he doesnt get paid in cash, but in credits. You'd write some evaluation to give to a prof, and everyone is happy. Since students arent full time translators, these projects may take a while (for 100 pages of documentation), but the job would get done.

Student translations will never be perfect, but technical documentation is much easier than poetry!

As a language student myself (japanese), the translating work I have done has been great. And if I had pulled off getting credit for it, I'd would've been psyched!

GNU gettext

[hgayosso]

Usually, programs are written and documented in English, and use English at execution time for interacting with users. This is true not only from within GNU, but also in a great deal of commercial and free software. Using a common language is quite handy for communication between developers, maintainers and users from all countries. On the other hand, most people are less comfortable with English than with their own native language, and would rather be using their mother tongue for day to day's work, as far as possible. Many would simply love seeing their computer screen showing a lot less of English, and far more of their own language.

GNU `gettext' is an important step for the GNU Translation Project, as it is an asset on which we may build many other steps. This package offers to programmers, translators, and even users, a well integrated set of tools and documentation. Specifically, the GNU `gettext' utilities are a set of tools that provides a framework to help other GNU packages produce multi-lingual messages. These tools include a set of conventions about how programs should be written to support message catalogs, a directory and file naming organization for the message catalogs themselves, a runtime library supporting the retrieval of translated messages, and a few stand-alone programs to massage in various ways the sets of translatable strings, or already translated strings. A special GNU Emacs mode also helps interested parties in preparing these sets, or bringing them up to date.

http://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/gettext.html [gnu.org]

three suggestions from an experienced translator

[philologist]

There's a lot of good advice above:

1. Using native speakers is definitely a good idea. I have worked as a professional translator and even at that level there are tons of mistakes to be found from people who overestimate their skills in the target language.
   
   
2. Exploit your user base. Kinda obvious, eh? have people work in groups so that they can check their work. The suggestion about students was good, but, once again, native speaker students.
   
   
3. The Microsoft Glossaries [microsoft.com] are ready-made lists of terms for various messages and menu items. You could take these and adapt them and, ooooh, imagine the irony of using MS stuff for a free software project!
   

What are you waiting for?

GetText can be a good solution...

[nsebban]

...if you don't have long text parts.

Here in hhe company I work for, we often use GetText to manage internationnalisation. You will find more informations on the GNU GetText Documentation [gnu.org].

GetText works with C/C++, but also PHP, and I think (but I have no proof, so if anyone can confirm this ?) that it also works with PERL.