[Dev] ZipTie Translation Center

[Brett Wooldridge]

Wait for it...

I can testify first hand about the pain of managing translations, as I've been the one responsible for handling the translations provided to us by our Japanese partner.  So far the process has been one of me finding and zipping all relevant plugin.properties and message.properties files scattered in various projects and at various depths in the directory hierarchy.  Followed by emailing them to DAR in Japan, and several weeks later receiving their translated bundles.  Typically these arrive in SJIS (Shift-Japanese Input System) format, requiring the use of the native2java command line tool to convert them into their respective plugin_ja.properties or messages_ja.properties files.  And followed finally by putting these all back into their respective directories and checking them in.  Typically there are two or three "refreshes" (revised translations) in a release.

Let's just say it's been an error-prone process, and as a result the 2007.09 release had several missing files, several instances where revised translations were not updated, and new messages that DAR didn't have a chance to translate because of our crunch for time.  But it's good to have done it all manually because that leads to a better designed "automation".  Hence...

The ZipTie Translation Center web application is now online at the following URL:

http://xlation.ziptie.org/xlat_home.php

This URL will probably change (to simply http://xlation.ziptie.org), and for the next few days it is "unpublished" because we want to throw some lite security around it (to avoid translation vandalism).

Here are some highlights of the application:


 *   Allows our translators to directly view and edit side-by-side message bundles.  English on the left, translation on the right.
 *   Supports multiple branches.  Although only one is present at the moment the HEAD will be added in the next few days.
 *   Supports multiple languages.  As many as we want, adding a new language is simply a line in a configuration file.  Available languages, like branches, show up on the main page drop-down.
 *   Runs against a "live" workspace!  This does two things:
    *   Cut's out the middle-man.  Changes made through the web application will be checked-in to CVS automatically.
    *   Allows translators to perform translations on the HEAD prior to release.  Or to revise at any time!
 *   Highlights missing translation bundles.
 *   Within a message bundle highlights in red missing translations.
 *   Provides global search of both English messages and native language search of translated messages (using kanji for example).  The search is of particular use because if a translator spots a label in the UI that needs translation, they can search for it and find which project and message file contains that label, and then simply provide the translation.

I believe this application significantly lowers the bar for ZipTie translations.  So please, go have a poke around the Translation Center!  At present all of the translations [to look at] are in the org.ziptie.ui bundles (and org.ziptie.rcp). Feel free to click any link and push any button, right now you can pretty much do no harm.

-Brett

P.s. Disclaimer, I have no idea how Japanese will display in your browser.  It displays fine on OS X and Linux, but they both have all languages installed.  Windows I don't know about, so it may just appear as question marks and squiggles.  Of course, it will display fine to whoever is performing translations.
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