HelpHub Localisation Plan Meeting Notes

Attendees

Docs Team: @kenshino, @atachibana, @milana_cap, @cristianozanca
Polyglots TeamPolyglots Team Polyglots Team is a group of multilingual translators who work on translating plugins, themes, documentation, and front-facing marketing copy. https://make.wordpress.org/polyglots/teams/.: @nao (note taker), Matteo S.
MetaMeta Meta is a term that refers to the inside workings of a group. For us, this is the team that works on internal WordPress sites like WordCamp Central and Make WordPress. Team: @sergeybiryukov
Community Team: @_dorsvenabili
MultilingualPress: @nullbyte, @dinamiko

Community Team: Handbook Translation

  • The Spanish team has been manually translating it and put it on their RosettaRosetta The code name of the theme for the local WordPress sites (eg. bg.wordpress.org is a “Rosetta” site). All locale specific WordPress sites are referred to as “Rosetta sites.” The name was inspired from the ancient Rosetta Stone, which contained more or less the same text in three different languages. site
  • @_dorsvenabili said the community team was looking into focusing on handbook i18nInternationalization Internationalization (sometimes shortened to I18N , meaning “I - eighteen letters -N”) is the process of planning and implementing products and services so that they can easily be adapted to specific local languages and cultures, a process called localization. This is the process of making software translatable. Information about Internationalization for developers can be found in the Developer’s handbooks. dev in the near feature

General Discussion

We agreed on identifying common key requirements so that a general solution can be created for both the Community and Docs team’s handbooks

In short, after a lengthy discussion, we realized that the key requirement was really to have a place that local teams could write into the Rosetta site. Everything else could be decided on and improved upon later.

We therefore discussed various technical possibilities.

GlotPressGlotPress GlotPress is the translation management software that powers Translate.WordPress.org. More information is available at glotpress.org. vs Custom Post TypeCustom Post Type WordPress can hold and display many different types of content. A single item of such a content is generally called a post, although post is also a specific post type. Custom Post Types gives your site the ability to have templated posts, to simplify the concept. (CPT)

GlotPress

  • Pros
    • A large number of translation contributors are already familiar with it
    • Translation review (validation) flow and role system is established
    • Glossaries & fuzzy detection work well
  • Cons
    • Need to somehow push WordPress content into files (possibly)
    • The text in the source file needs to be wrapped around l10n functions
    • Not really meant for long-form text
    • Does not allow for new content to be created (relies on a base English version)

CPT

  • Pros
    • Relatively easy to build an MVPMinimum Viable Product "A minimum viable product (MVP) is a product with just enough features to satisfy early customers, and to provide feedback for future product development." - WikiPedia then test & extend
    • MultilingualPress (if used) can offer ways to connect sites, send notifications, and add hooksHooks In WordPress theme and development, hooks are functions that can be applied to an action or a Filter in WordPress. Actions are functions performed when a certain event occurs in WordPress. Filters allow you to modify certain functions. Arguments used to hook both filters and actions look the same.
    • Since it’s WP based, should be easy for translators to learn
    • Allows local teams to create new localized contents rather than translated docs
  • Cons
    • No detailed (e.g. per paragraph) validation flow like GlotPress
    • Additional roles may have to be defined
    • Users need to be added to Rosetta sites, possibly causing a bottleneck/gatekeeper situation

MVP for the CPT solution

Write up the necessary custom post types on one Rosetta site so that the localeLocale Locale = language version, often a combination of a language code and a region code, for instance es_MX denotes Spanish as it’s used in Mexico. A list of all locales supported by WordPress in https://make.wordpress.org/polyglots/teams/ team can create a copy of English pages and translate (see details on this post under “Phase 1”).

Future Requirements

  • Notification for original text changes
  • Diff between the original and the starting point of the translation
  • Ways to distinguish obsolete contents
  • A content approval workflow to ensure the correctness of content
  • And more to be discussed

+make.wordpress.orgWordPress.org The community site where WordPress code is created and shared by the users. This is where you can download the source code for WordPress core, plugins and themes as well as the central location for community conversations and organization. https://wordpress.org//docs +make.wordpress.org/community

#handbook, #helphub