Translations : use services like transifex / crowdin ?

[ozh]

I admit i18n isn't an important matter for me, but it's obvious it provides value to the project.

What would be the benefits, and the migration process if any, of using online services like crowdin or transifex?

More generally, is there anything we can do to improve the translation process in any way, or make translators' task easier ?

Anyone with an idea on the question is welcome here :)

[ozh]

Other similar (it seems) service: https://poeditor.com

(they all seems to have free plans for open source stuff)

[dumais1112]

All these platforms (and others) work well, but only up to a certain point. Believe me (as I do this for a living), if a perfect or near perfect "auto-translator" existed, you'd have heard of it.

Concise answer: yes to these services, but not without a human proofreading touch and logic.

Let me know if I may help.

[dgw]

Crowdin is what my other localized projects use. Any of them would probably be fine, though. If you plan to sync updated translations for each release, it really shouldn't matter which one you choose; my gripes with Crowdin are mostly related to how it handles "pushing" updates to a branch/PR automatically.

[ozh]

Currently, I update the YOURLS/YOURL.pot file (using poedit) so people download it, translate it and put it in their repo.

Any migration process you can think of if we go with, say, crowdin?
(I'll give crowdin a deeper-than-2mn-googling look tomorrow)

[dgw]

Crowdin's upload/import functionality is fairly robust. https://support.crowdin.com/uploading-translations/ I was actually going to test it just now, maybe give a head-start if Crowdin ends up being our chosen platform, but the YOURLS name and project ID are taken (I hope by you, @ozh).

But anyway, it shouldn't be too difficult to just download all the files from their respective repos and merge them into the translation service. Releasing would be the other thing to think about—though downloading and compiling the translations is still the workflow, it's probably easier to download l10n files from one place than ~26. (Note that the project I currently manage on Crowdin has all its l10n stored alongside the code, and Crowdin sends a PR when new translations come in, so I'm not at all experienced with the "pull" workflow tools available.)

[ozh]

I don't remember creating a project on Crowdin... and when I (re?)create an account there logging with Github, I see no YOURLS project of mine ... 😩

[LeoColomb]

Well, I've used both for different projects, and Transifex appears to be a much more "professional" tool. Pull requests for translations from Crowdin becomes noisy at a certain point...

[LeoColomb]

I see no YOURLS project of mine

Bonus point, I own YOURLS project on Transifex! 😄

[dumais1112]

Hi Léo, To be honest, I haven’t really used either platform. I do Eng-French translating. I use Smartcat <https://www.smartcat.ai/> and SDL Trados <https://www.sdl.com/software-and-services/translation-software/sdl-trados-studio/> depending on the job at hand. These have worked well for me.

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On Apr 20, 2020, at 17:51, Léo Colombaro ***@***.***> wrote: I see no YOURLS project of mine Bonus point, I own YOURLS project on Transifex! 😄 — You are receiving this because you commented. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#2656 (comment)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/ANUCZAFNF22IZ3YYS2I566DRNS7XZANCNFSM4MMOCOYQ>.

[comradekingu]

@ozh I have used all those platforms extensively, for years. Crowdin and Transifex are not fine by any means. They are both lackluster tools, and employ as much tracking and profiling as is permitted by their now GDPR revised terms and conditions. I don't want to sub-license my work, and I don't want my activity sold to advertisers and data collection agencies.

What invariably happens is projects on there don't see much activity, and quality suffers as a result. Not that quality is any good with more activity either, seeing as the tools themselves actually prevent consistency, short of insane amounts of extra effort.

My preference is for the libre software Weblate, either self-hosted, or the "Hosted Weblate" service. I find the "professional" tools of the translation agency I work for to be about as confidence inspiring as the ill-fated "enterprise security" moniker. Crowdin and Transifex are "professional" by way of having pictures of smiling people with telephones, and sitting around in meetings on their websites.

@LeoColomb @dgw You can set up integration in many ways to prevent noise with Weblate. → https://docs.weblate.org/

[ozh]

@comradekingu thanks for your insightful comment, it's much appreciated. Didn't know Weblate, I'll have a look.

I'll also add to our to do list that YOURLS should have a couple pictures of smiling people as well :)