Discussion: how to keep message catalogues in sync?

[pnbecker]

Between DSpace 7.5 and 8.0 we changed some entries in the english message catalogues that use variables. Unfortunately we did not changed these entries in the german message catalogue and probably also not in other languages. One prominent examples are the entries browse.title and "browse.title.page". When you open a browse index in DSpace 8 {{ collection }} shows up in the header of that page. It was removed in the english message catalogue as it is not set by the code anymore.

While we do have a script to show differences between language catalogues, there normally are a ton of changes between major versions. It is a lot of work to keep a message catalogue in total sync with the english message catalogue that is changed by many different developers regularly.

We should discuss:

• Can we differentiate between important changes to the message catalogue and less important changes? Can we track important changes?
• How can we ensure that as part of our release procedure we at least try to update message catalogues? Do we need to plan in time for that?
• Shall we build up a mailing list of people willing to help out? Should we look out for people/institutions to "adopt" message catalogues?

[pnbecker]

At The Library Code we tried to automatically translate message catalogues using a python script and DeepL. While it was helpful, the result definitely needed to be edited by a native speaker. Nevertheless, it might help to reduce the work.

[alanorth]

Would a service like Weblate help this? I see many software projects using it. I think there are others that are free.