Lets talk about translations

[mr-c]

I can't search the mailing list, though I've heard there have been conversations in the past.

Is there a plan for maintaining a lesson in multiple languages?

[mr-c]

For the CWL User Guide we'd like to be able to connect to one of the crowdsource translation sites and to be able to give credit to our translators automatically.

[rgaiacs]

Hi @mr-c, some discussions at https://github.com/Carpentries-ES/board/issues and others in different places. Sorry for the information in different places. The problem with some crowdsource translation sites is that they don't work well with long strings and small changes, see https://github.com/Carpentries-ES/board/issues/2.

This repository doesn't have the code to keep each translation in one folder which would be nice for help with discoverability. This is one problem that Wikipedia have in the past and they had to build https://www.wikidata.org/ to solve it.

I didn't had the time to implement the changes and instructors translators didn't wanted to get involved with the infrastructure or didn't have time as well. @ErinBecker worked to translate the files in _layouts and _includes for a Spanish translation of tree lessons.

[ErinBecker]

Thanks for the quick response @rgaiacs! I was just about to say the same things.

@mr-c - we're working on getting out an initial publication in Spanish of two of the SWC lessons (git and shell). These translations were done by a team of new Instructors. There will be Spanish-speaking Maintainers for those lessons, who will be going through Maintainer Onboarding soon. We're using this first set of lessons as a pilot to help us know what processes need to be developed and are working on documenting these processes as they happen - so there should be much clearer communication about this in the future.

[mr-c]

Great, thank you @rgaiacs and @ErinBecker! Selfishly my question is in the context of carpentry-forks, like the CWL user guide. If possible, I'd prefer to work together to build a localization strategy for this and other carpentry-style curricula.

[mr-c]

List of Jekyll plugins for multilingualism: https://github.com/Anthony-Gaudino/jekyll-multiple-languages-plugin#10-other-language-plugins

[rgaiacs]

Selfishly my question

I like selfish questions. :-) They are better than no questions at all. Keep the selfish questions coming.

I'd prefer to work together to build a localization strategy for this and other carpentry-style curricula.

We will keep you in the loop.

@mr-c In short term, if you already have a couple of translators that want to contribute, the best steps would be

1. Create a fork of https://github.com/common-workflow-language/user_guide/ for the desired language
2. Give permission to the translators
3. Translate the files in _episodes, _extras, _includes, _layouts plus some of the files in the root of the Git repository.
4. Update the translation from the English version should be as straightforward as merge the upstream commits and resolve the conflicts.
5. When we have a better infrastructure in place, the migration should be limited to move a few files from one place to another or run as script.

List of Jekyll plugins for multilingualism

Because The Carpentries are using GitHub pages we can't use any plugin. @fmichonneau will do some work in infrastructure. Please fill https://goo.gl/forms/KIZQ4fbNed3FjVEh1 to help @fmichonneau.

[katrinleinweber]

We might see improvements on that front, because some of GitHub's own projects also struggle with this problem, see https://github.com/github/choosealicense.com/issues/68#issuecomment-366096769 and https://github.com/github/opensource.guide/blob/master/docs/translations.md for example.

[mr-c]

Is there a 2022 update on how translations might be easier to maintain? Is the new template better for that?

[zkamvar]

Hi @mr-c,

There was a community discussion about the past attempts and future directions in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zCrGda6p7Q.

Ultimately, translations have been attempted in a few different ways, and looking forward, we need to implement a plan where translations of the contents are considered along with the community dynamics of translations (see https://github.com/carpentries/workbench/discussions/6 and https://github.com/carpentries/sandpaper/issues/18 for some of the sticky points).

The new lesson infrastructure will be better for translations, but we aren't there quite just yet.