How to contribute translations
There are two ways you can contribute a translation: with a pull request or at 99translations.com. But lets start with some....
There is no strict policy in the project on how to deal with this issue, the choice therefore has to be made according to translators' intuition and common sense. When multiple cases are present (e.g. Slavic languages) you definitely have to resort to using the actual application to avoid silly mistakes. Inflection of verbs should probably be circumvented by using a different person (eg. frequently the second person), such that sentences in the form "You have(male-form-verb)/have(female-form-verb) done something" are avoided. Keep in mind that other social networks have been extensively translated, these could be helpful to look at and get a sense for how the translation works.
First look if you find a existing translation.
If you have to create a new one look here or in config/locales/rails-i18n/ which code is used there for your language.
If your language isn't available there choose the right code according to ISO 639-1 (or ISO 639-2/3 if your language has no ISO 639-1 code) in lowercase letters. If you want to create a country-specific one, that is not the most spoken type of it, append - and your country code according to ISO 3166-1 in uppercase letters.
Examples:
- de for German
- de-AT for German specific to Austria
If you want to create formal or informal versions of your translation append _informal or _formal to the version that is less common for social networks.
Examples:
- fr for the French formal one and
- fr_informal for the informal one
First read and follow Contributing to Diaspora: Using git.
- config/locales/devise/devise.< code >.yml
- config/locales/diaspora/< code >.yml
- Leave config/locales/rails-i18n/ untouched, if you want to change something there send a pull request here.
If you want to create a new translation copy the en files, choose the correct language code (see above) and change every occurence of en with your code. Don't forget the root element in the files!
If you want to fix an untranslatable string or something feel free, but only add the new key to en.yml/devise.en.yml.
Note: Please do not try to upload translations to 99translations.com after you've downloaded them to edit them in a texteditor. There are some weird bugs with that. You can instead send them to diaspora@mrzyx.de and I'll see how I can add them. If you do so please try to provide as complete translations as possible.
First go to 99translations.com and create/sign-in to your account.
Then go to diaspora's project site and join the team.
After that choose a file you want to work on here.
Choose your language or click "Create Translation" to create a new one. In the "Locale" field enter your language code (don't use 99translations.com's select boxes. To choose the correct language code see above.).
You then will be presented the following view:
- At the "New" tab you can translate untranslated strings
- At the "Modified" tab you can retranslate strings that got updated in the master translation (the English one).
- At the "All" or the "Up-to-date" tab you can optimize already translated strings
When you click on "Edit" you will see the following:
- You can see the original text from the master file (the English translation file).
- You can enter the translation in the textbox
- Note: have a look at the key (under "Edit Translation"). It can help you with the context, especially for gender specific translations.
- And then click "Save and continue" to get to the next translation (Or skip this one with "Next").