Menu

**Translating the Tatoeba UI (post#2)**
Folks,
As far we support 350 languages on Tatoeba but it's available only about 45 languages and most of their translations are "incomplete", I'll PM some members in a couple of days in order to know if they would like to help Tatoeba on that, promote tjheir language and help everyone to "access" Tatoeba (Have Tatoeba in his/her native language)
Does it mean that translating the UI will be restricted for invited members?
NO. Let's say that I will be like the "hey, how about" guy on that. I'm already observing some members and I'll contact them on this weekend
Can I translate Tatoeba UI into more than one language?
Sure! You can a native speaker of Spanish, for example, and speak Esperanto, Lojban. Make yourself at home :)
How about in case the language I want to translate isn't available on Transifex (the platform we use)?
We can request them to support this language :D I'd be glad to help you on this task or make it by myself. However I'll need some info about the language you're requesting
Any questions? Please, let me know :)
► https://tatoeba.org/eng/private...rite/Ricardo14
rvj1444@gmail.com

I would like to share my thoughts about how we can improve the situation.
We could prioritize some strings that are more likely to be shown or more important to understand the website, so that translators can start with translating these first. Selecting such strings may prove to be a difficult task however.
For languages which translation is really incomplete, we could put a banner warning about that and suggesting to help. But it would only makes sense if the banner itself is translated.
We could prioritize some languages. That’s a potentially controversial idea, but let me explain. As a matter of fact, people from certain countries have on average a better understanding of English, so on a purely functional perspective, we may assume that it’s less important for them that the site is fully translated. Based on some data about English intelligibility [1], for example we can tell that on average it’s less useful to translate the site in Dutch because 90% of Dutch people can understand English. For comparison, only 5% of Russians can understand English, so we can prioritize Russian over Dutch. Actually I don’t really like this idea, because I believe that on a qualitative perspective the message is always better received when speaking in someone’s mother tongue.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...ing_population

Tärkeysjärjestyksestä: Suurin osa ihmisistä kääntäisi sivuston omalle vahvalle kielelleen, joita ei kenelläkään ole kovin montaa. Kovin harva joutuisi valitsemaan esimerkiksi venäjän ja hollannin välillä. Niinpä kielten tärkeysjärjestykseen laittaminen ei vaikuta oleelliselta.

> For languages which translation is really incomplete, we could put a banner warning about that and suggesting to help. But it would only makes sense if the banner itself is translated.
I think it would be acceptable to use a machine-translated message for such a banner.

Well, I don't think it would be acceptable because of cultural differences. I believe that warning about the language and asking for help are the kind of things you have to word quite differently depending on the culture. There is a lot more than words to translate if you want to effectively convey the message. In particular, if you ask for help in a clumsy way, you may as well scare people away. To illustrate my view, here is a story about Microsoft’s infamous translations in Japanese https://www.724685.com/weekly/qa040623.htm
If we want people to help translating, better ask them in a way that is appropriate in their culture. This is all the more true when languages that need the most help are from cultures that are totally different that English-speaking countries.

Tällä hetkellä, jos jotain ei ole käännetty toivotulle kielellä, näkyy se englanniksi. Englanti on siis oletuskieli.
Olisiko mahdollista asettaa käyttöliittymäkielet henkilökohtaiseen järjestykseen? Voisin esimerkiksi laittaa:
Svenska
Dansk
Suomi
English
Tällöin, jos ruotsinkielinen käännös jollekin kohdalle olisi olemassa, näytettäisiin se ruotsiksi. Jos ei, niin tanskaksi, jos se olisi olemassa. Jos ei, niin suomeksi, jos se löytyisi. Ja lopulta, jos mitään muuta ei löytyisi, näytettäisiin kohta englanniksi.
Tämä on toteutettu käyttämässäni Linux-versiossa, mutta en toki tiedä, onko se Tatoeban ja Transifexin kautta mahdollista.