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Die Translate-projek het onlangs weergawe 2.1.0 van Pootle vrygestel. Pootle is 'n webgebaseerde stelsel vir vertaling en die bestuur van vertalings.

Hierdie is 'n groot nuwe weergawe na 'n lang ontwikkelingstyd. Dit het verskeie nuwe funksies waaroor ek wou skryf. Daar is omtrent 'n duisend veranderinge aangebring sedert weergawe 2.0, afgesien van die verbeteringe aan die Translate Toolkit.

Die volledige artikel (in Engels).

Gusii On this page/Sur cette page... (hide)1. Classification / Classification2. Where Spoken / Localisation géographique3. Number of Speakers / Nombre de locuteurs4. Dialect ...

Moore - Mooré - Mòoré On this page/Sur cette page... (hide)1. Classification / Classification2. Where Spoken / Localisation géographique 5. Classification / ...

Rwanda, Rundi On this page/Sur cette page... (hide)1. Classification / Classification Kinyarwanda, Kirundi 7. Classification / Classification Ruanda and Rundi (properly, Kinyarwanda and ...

Daar is onlangs geskryf oor die bydraers tot die Linux-kern en die GNOME-projek. Leonardo het baie gepas opgemerk dat vrywilligers steeds 'n baie belangrike brydrae lewer tot GNOME. Ek het ook vandag gesien dat die Pootle-gemeenskap ook met spoed kan reageer.

Ons het minder as 24 uur gelede in ons gemeenskap gevra dat vertalings vir die komende Pootle 2.1 bygewerk moet word. Binne enkele minute was daar reeds drie vertalers besig, en na minder as 24 uur is daar reeds aktitwiteit in 25 tale.

Pootle 2.1 sal 'n klomp verbeteringe bring, soos 'n nuwe ontwerp vir die vertaalbladsy, ondersteuning vir verskeie nuwe lêerforate, masjienvertaling, onttrekking van algemene terme, en aansienlik beter werkverrigting.

Hier is die nuwe ontwerp op 'n Japannese vertaalbladsy met Witrussies as verwysingstaal:

Do you hve a nice shiny Mac or iPhone app that you want to translate? Now you can easily manage the localisation of Mac OS X .strings files with translators using common open source PO editing tools.

I'll post a little later about using Pootle to allow you to do web-based community localisation of the same strings files.

Firefox Home become the motivator

I've really wanted to write this for a while, in fact a bug has been lurking about this very issue for some time now. But it was the release of Mozilla's Firefox Home for the iPhone that really got me going.

I just knew that we could make it easy to localise not just Firefox Home but any iPhone app.

But why don't you just use a text editor?

Good question. Why not just use a text editor? Well you can do that. But as I always like to say you wouldn't ask a vim user to use Emacs now would you? Or a better example, you wouldn't swap your favourite IDE for Notepad. Of course you wouldn't. So why do you ask a translator to swap their high performance translation tool for a beat up old text editor? Do you hate translators that much that you'd inflict on them something that you'd never do to yourself?

There are good strings files editors why not use those? Two reasons. Firstly, we want translators to use the tools that they are familiar with and in the case of open source localisation it's most likely an open source PO editing tool. Secondly, for web translation we want to be able to do a few things the strings files just can't do which we get when we convert the file to PO.

What are the benefits of converting to PO

1. We hide the encoding, users don't need to worry about getting the file into UTF-16
2. We manage escaping, we hide that from the user and they don't need to learn anything about .strings escaping
3. The output strings files look like the input, we preserve layout and comments so you can get cleaner diffs with the original
4. We don't break files, if we do its a bug. For a programmer this is great as you are almost certain that the files you have won't break a build. You could even pull in the latest translations and be confident that they aren't broken
5. Partial translations can be used in your application while testing
6. Translators get to use their familiar PO editing: Virtaal, Poedit or Lokalize
7. You are able to do community based web localisation using Pootle

What are strings files

Strings files are simple key value files that look like this:

/* Comment */ "key" = "value"; "Save As..." = "Stoor as..."; What is the translation process now with PO files?

First we convert .strings to PO files.

Note: prop2po strings support is not in a released version of the Translate Toolkit. But you can use these instruction to run from a checkout.

prop2po -P English.strings English.string.pot

Send English.strings.pot to all of your translations. They can rename this to their language e.g. German.strings.po and begin translating in any PO editing tool.

Converting back is just as simple.

po2prop -t English.strings German.strings.po German.strings

You now have a German.strings file that can be used in your application. An added benefit is that even if the German is only 50% translated we can still convert back for testing. If you haven't translated something then we'll just insert the English into German.strings.

When you update the English.strings it's a simple matter of sending your translators the new POT files and they can update their old PO files using their PO editor. Compare that to anyone using strings files in an editor who would need to perform a diff and manually check for changes, why do that if you can simply get the translator to update the file and let their PO tool show them what needs translating.

You can hide translators from the po2prop and prop2po step making it a very simple matter of publishing a POT file for translators to keep up-to-date.

However, we can make it even easier by using a web based translation tool like Pootle. In this case the translators don't even need to do the updating, you can do that for them.

As I said I'll be making another blog post about setting up a strings project on Pootle.

ANLoc, The African Network for Localization which kasahorow is a part, with their mission to empower Africans to participate in the digital world by removing the last inch limitations imposed on language usage by the limitation of technology are calling for applications from software localization teams.

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Ever wanted to type in most of the Ghanaian local languages?. With kasahorow virtual keyboards, you can do that. You can embed them on your own website to allow people to type in the Ghanaian local languages. Imagine updating your Facebook status message in Akan? or using kasahorow API to allow visitors of your website to search for local words or do simple translations. Don't you love love kasahorow tools :-)

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Ek moes onlangs 'n effens moeiliker stuk vertaalwerk doen vir Pidgin. Deel daarvan was 'n uitbreiding vir die XMPP-protokol om emosies te standaardiseer. Met dié uitbreiding kan verskillende geselsprogramme inligting uitruil oor die gebruiker se gemoedstoestand op 'n standaardmanier. Maar die teks wat vir die gebruiker gewys word, moet natuurlik vertaal word, en dit is toe glad nie so maklik nie.

Daar is meer as 80 emosies wat in die spesifikasie beskryf word en dit sluit ook 'n paar fisiese toestande in (soos "koud" en "siek"). Ek val toe weg om te vertaal, maar besef vinnig dat hierdie nie so maklik is nie. Eerstens ken ek nie die nuanses van al die Engelse terme goed genoeg nie, maar natuurlik raadpleeg ek toe maar net woordeboeke. Kort voor lank is daar egter terme met veelvuldige vertalings, waarvan sommige van die vertalings oorvleuel met die vertaling van ander terme. Sommige van die terme waarmee ek toe nou sukkel:

• Amazed, In awe
• Thankful, Grateful
• Amorous, In love, Aroused
• Dismayed, Dejected
• Contented, Satisfied
• Humbled: Dit is dubbelsinnig. Dit kan vernederd of nederig beteken — nogal 'n groot verskil. Die betekenis word in die spesifikasie gegee, maar hoe gaan gebruikers weet watter betekenis hier bedoel word?
• Lucky en Happy: Hierdies vertaal ongelukkig altwee na "Gelukkig" en onderskeid word gewoonlik uit konteks afgelei. Hier sal waarskynlik geen konteks wees waar hierdie vertalings gebruik word nie; dalk net 'n lys emosies om uit te kies.

Die doel is natuurlik nie net om sommer net 'n vertaling te kry nie, maar iets wat akkuraat is, onderskeibaar is van die ander, en wat die regte boodskap gaan oordra aan die persoon met wie mens gesels — wat baie moontlik 'n ander geselsprogram gebruik, dalk selfs in 'n ander taal. Dit help nie as twee terme op die selfde manier vertaal is en mens sien iets soos "Gelukkig" twee keer in die lys nie.

Alhoewel dit in die spesifikasie die idee gee dat die lys emosies gebaseer is op 'n klomp goeie navorsing oor emosies (insluitend oor kultuurgrense heen), wonder ek hoe nuttig hierdie lys is terwyl dit terme het wat so naby aan mekaar is. Alhoewel sommige van die vangplekke spesifiek met Afrikaans te doen het, lyk dit of daar tog 'n paar terme hier is wat verwarring vir vertalers kan skep, en boonop nog vir gebruikers ook.

Later in die selfde lêer kom ek toe 'n klomp goeters teë uit die OSCAR-protocol (gebruik in ICQ en AIM) waarmee gebruikers kan aandui waarmee hulle besig is. Daar is toe hierdie drie vertalings: Surfing, Searching the web, Browsing the web — frustrasie. Dan is daar ook 'n paar wat ek nie in sou belangstel om te weet dat iemand daarmee besig is nie. 'n Paar hiervan het toe ook nie my aandag gekry nie.

Lesse hieruit

• Internasionalisering is moeilik as dit met emosies te make het.
• Programmeerders moet kommentaar gee om dinge so goed as moontlik te verduidelik aan vertalers.
• Dié kommentaar moet in die vertaallêer wees. Die skakel na die spesifikasie is eers later op die poslys met vertalers gedeel. Mense wat Pidgin in die toekoms vertaal gaan dit mis.
• Goeie woordeboeke is fantasties. Dié werk sou aansienlik langer geneem het as ek nie goeie vertrekpunte telkens in die woordeboeke kon kry nie.
• Dit het baie gehelp om 'n tweede opinie te vra.
• Dié woorde kan nie goedsmoeds in 'n sin ingevoeg word nie. Mens kry warm, maar voel hartseer. Daar is dalk nog meer redes in ander tale om nooit te probeer om hierdies in 'n sin in te prop nie.

I'm sure you have been asking several times, do kasahorow have an API I can work with to build this killer app. The answer I have for you is, YES we do have one.

In this post, I am going to expose you to the API and how you can use it for whatever purpose you have in mind and bear in mind, you cannot abuse it :-).

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I missed out a post on Virtaal 0.6.0 so I'll wrap both the major and 0.6.1 bugfix release together. For those not in the know, Virtaal is our Computer Aided Translation Tool (CAT) that we've been developing as part of the ANLoc project.

Our aim in Virtaal continues to be to have a simple clean interface, yet to present powerful features to translators. We seem to be doing the right thing when you read the following comments from a recent review of Virtaal, "It’s clean interface and ease of use are the best virtues of this application. ... there [are] NO extra buttons, and the layout looks like a side-by-side sheet presentation. Beautiful. It also allows access to machine translation services such as Google, Moses and Opentran. Other features include highlighted diffs between the translation memory suggestions, a don’t-touch-your-mouse approach, and much more."
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So what did we add to 0.6.* version of Virtaal? Let's have a look.

Welcome to Virtaal's welcome area

The most notable change in Virtaal 0.6.0 is the new welcome area. In early versions of Virtaal new users where faced with the "What now" thought as they opened the tool and faced a blank screen. Since Virtaal has a very clean interface there aren't any hints about what the application does. There are no unused panes for TM or glossary entries. We realised that we could actually make use of this space to enhance usability and help newbies. In true Virtaal fashion we avoided adding a splash screen or tip of the day dialogue. What we developed is the following welcome screen and we hope that you like it.

The welcome screen is not meant to be just a pretty face, we wan it to be really useful for the translator. As you can see it gives easy access to previous translations, guides and other help so both the seasoned translator and the newbie are easily and quickly helped.

We hope to add other features to the welcome screen in future versions, hopefully emerging as a dashboard of sorts where we can show the state of work and activities currently in progress.

New and improved Machine Translation plugins

We added support for Microsoft Translator (or Bing Translator as they sometimes call it). You may recall that we did a special release of this plugin on Windows to allow translators to translate into Haitian Creole at the time of the Haitian earthquake. A recent study comparing Google, Yahoo's Babelfish and Microsoft Bing MT solutions seems to indicate that for short texts that Microsoft and Yahoo may offer better results.

We've supported Apertium, the FOSS rule-based Machine Translation engine, for a long time now. Apertium recently created a new service API that mostly mimics Google's MT API. We've adapted the Virtaal plugin to use this new API. While most other MT engines are statistical based, Apertium uses a rule based approach. For the languages that Apertium supports it might present better MT suggestions then statistical MT services.

Improved format support

Virtaal uses the Translate Toolkit to provide support for various localisation formats. With this release we now integrate support for OmegaT glossary files, you can now edit these directly in Virtaal instead of in a spreadsheet or wordprocessor. We hope this leads to more reuse of terminology.

An XLIFF file can provide alt-trans entries and Virtaal will now display these in the suggestion dropdown. In the screenshot below you can see the suggested translation as the first entry provided by user 'admin'.

When you are working in Pootle with XLIFF files you will now be able to review suggestions off-line. XLIFF files supplied to you might also contain alt-trans entries with MT and TM suggestions, these can now also be seen when you translate.

In case you've forgotten Virtaal can edit Qt Linguists .ts files, thus you can translate pretty much any FOSS applications in Virtaal. With this release we fixed some bugs relating to plural support in newer TS files so we should be able to manage any file currently in the wild.

New languages, improved language features and language related bugs

A translation tool that isn't itself translated! We're proud to see a growing number of people contributing translations to Virtaal. We've added: Bulgarian, Icelandic and Thai and of course many other translations have been updated. Virtaal is now translated into 40 languages.

Virtaal running with Translate Toolkit, versions > 1.7.0, is able to detect your target language based on the 'Language-Team' header entry in your PO files. So your language pair selection is almost always going to be just correct.

We now have better interaction with the Voikko backend of Enchant and improved autocorrect data for Polish (yes we do autocorrect using OpenOffice.org data files). We've also added a workaround for GNOME bug 569581 (Windows US intl layout, Afrikaans 'n).

Accessibility

We worked hard in this release to make sure that Virtaal works well in high contrast modes to assist people with visual disabilities.

The following before and after pictures show the changes in a High Contrast Inverse theme. While the changes are small it's worth realising that the tool was unusable for someone needing inverse colour schemes in order to use a computer. You will notice that the text input area is now properly rendering as light on dark. You can't see it here but we also made sure that the placeable colours, placeable highlighting and terminology colours all now work in inverse.

A raft of bugfixes and small features

• Virtaal has a very good system to handle placeables. We've now made it possible to select placeables from the plural in the source as well as to cycle through the placeables back to selecting the whole source text after you've moved through all placeables.
• Support for proxy servers - Virtaal just didn't work in university labs, hopefully this provides enough support for most cases.
• Reduced flickering in the editing area - stepping through large units in Virtaal produced too much flicker, now we will be gentle on the eye.
• Use the most frequent word as autocomplete suggestion - we just weren't giving you the best autocomplete suggestion all the time, now we do.
• Better handling of errors in the Open-Tran service - Open-Tran.eu has been down quite a lot recently and we get a few XMLRPC errors, these are now all caught.

You can read the release notes for other minor bugs that were fixed in 0.6.0 and 0.6.1.

Keyboard layout for windows for various African languages.Eg, Akan, Ga, Ewe, Hausa, etc

Ek is deur 'n paar vriende oortuig om 'n geleentheid te reël om 'n paar mense bymekaar te kry om bietjie te vertaal. Dwayne is so gaaf om die Translate.org.za-kantoor aan te bied vir die geleentheid.

Dis sommer 'n geleentheid vir diegene wat belangstel in Afrikaanse lokalisering vir bietjie touwys maak, bietjie kuier, bietjie vertaal, bietjie inspireer, ens. As iemand belangstel om by ons aan te sluit, moet hulle my so gou as moontlik laat weet, ter wille van die reëlings en koördinasie.

Plek

Translate.org.za se kantoor in Groenkloof, Pretoria. Daar is heelwat woordeboeke, vinnige internet, en sitplek vir 'n paar mense.

As mense virtueel wil aansluit, kan ons dalk iets reël, alhoewel dit dalk makliker gaan wees by 'n volgende geleentheid. Laat weet gerus.

Tyd

Saterdag, 29 Mei 2010

Ons begin 10:00 en hou aan tot so 12:30 of omtrent middagetenstyd. Daarna kan die wat wil sommer bietjie kuier terwyl ons iets ligs eet.

Wat gaan vertaal word?

Voorstelle van programme om te vertaal is welkom. Alhoewel ons eintlik aan omtrent enigiets kan werk wat iemand wil doen, raai ek 'n paar van ons gaan aan hierdie projekte wil werk (party het reeds begin):

Dasher
Xiphos
GNOME se speletjies
gedit

Meeste van hierdie programme loop op Linux en Windows, en 'n paar nog op OSX ook. Daar is reeds gedeeltelike vertalings vir al hierdies om mee te werk.

Verder wil ek graag werk aan die verbetering van die komende GNOME 3, en ek sal graag dat ons kyk na iets wat daartoe bydra.