Integrate Locki (i18n)?

[keithamus]

I received an email from @chikathreesix - who hopefully won't mind me quoting it here:

This is not an endorsement or recommendation for this product, I did not want to accept or deny the offer without floating to other maintainers/core-contribs:

I am @chikathreesix, a creator of Locki and a fan of Chai.

Are you interested in localizing Chai docs into other languages?

Our service Locki enables your community to easily translate your docs on your website. It enables your website's visitors to translate your content right on your website by inserting a few lines of JavaScript.
https://locki.io

Now Node.js is considering using Locki and this is the test integration with Node.js docs. Try this out and see how it works.
https://locki-nodejs-test.herokuapp.com/api/

Also, check out this video to get more insights on how Locki can help Chai's localization.
https://youtu.be/c21-ac_26sk

Feel free to ask me any questions!

@meeber @lucasfcosta @shvaikalesh @vieiralucas thoughts?

[lucasfcosta]

@keithamus Looks like a good idea!
I'd love to translate our docs to PT-BR.
I'll take a look at this service this weekend and then I'll be able to give a more detailed feedback about it. Right now the only thing that doesn't make me so comfortable is how can we analyze other's translations, I love the idea of everyone being able to contribute, but it would still be nice to proof read what others write before accepting it.

I need to take a further look at locki, but for now I like the idea of localizing our docs.

[shvaikalesh]

@keithamus Thanks for sharing this!

I can do (or review) Russian, and locki seems like a nice tool to use. Mainly our docs are API references, they won't benefit from translation much, but "creating plugin" guides surely will.

[meeber]

Looks interesting

[vieiralucas]

Sounds awesome!
I'll try to take a look at locki later today

[chikathreesix]

@keithamus Thank you for opening up this issue!
@lucasfcosta We are not currently considering introducing an approval process, however, you can restrict the editing only to your designated team and we save all the history of the changes as shown in the video. And also, we are implementing a feature to rollback to a specific point and show more visibility on who did what.
Happy to answer any concerns and questions :)

[keithamus]

To play a bit of devil's advocate; we could do i18n work without using Locki - it would just be a case of duplicating every page and re-writing in a specific language, which seems to be about as much work as using Locki, give or take. My point being - let's separate the idea of adding localisations (which we seem very pro-doing) and specifically integrating Locki (which we should focus for this issue). I'll adjust the title and description to this effect.

[vieiralucas]

Locki seems a little bit easier. But IMO, currently there are some downsides.

• The translation data is not stored at chai's side
• Lack of an approval process
• The localized version will need js to render (hurts SEO)
• We wont be able to use github issues and prs to handle proposals

@chikathreesix please correct me if I'm lying 😸

[chikathreesix]

Thanks, @keithamus
Actually one of the reason why I built Locki was I had been struggling with localizing a website with I18n library before so I believe Locki is way easier! 😉

Thanks, @vieiralucas
Yes, your points are correct. Let me answer to them.

The translation data is not stored at chai's side

Since we are providing API to fetch translations (which is not documented yet though), you can anytime download them. We'd like to provide a feature to download them easily since the copyrights for translations belong to Chai community.

Lack of an approval process

Let me clarify your concern. Are you concerning that unapproved translations go live?

The localized version will need js to render (hurts SEO)

We are also thinking about implementing SEO by providing some plugins on the server-side. How are you hosting your docs?

We wont be able to use github issues and prs to handle proposals

This is true but we will add more features to support community, which might not be exactly same as issues or prs in order to suit needs for localization.

Thanks!

[keithamus]

Are you concerning that unapproved translations go live?

This would be my concern, although I don't know if it is @vieiralucas' - could you answer this?

[keithamus]

TBH I don't know if Locki would fit our use case. Having out-of-band issue/PR tracker would be a pain, and we'd probably end up downloading the translation as part of a nightly build, to bundle them into static pages (so we dont need to rely on js). My personal feels: We could just skip the Locki step and handle i18n by just duplicating each page of the site into a language specific format, it would be a bit of a drag - but it seems like Locki doesn't actually make that any easier, but adds friction for us in having out-of-band PR/issues.

[vieiralucas]

Let me clarify your concern. Are you concerning that unapproved translations go live?

Yes

@chikathreesix, I think that Locki's idea is great and has a lot of potential. But I don't feel like it is ready for localizing a github open source project yet. I'm with @keithamus here, it seems easier and better to just do it "by hand" using github.

I would like to hear more maybe from @meeber and @shvaikalesh (if they are available) about these things we discussed here.

[aaronsofaly]

Hey all! Thought I'd chime in.

This looks like the thread where Node is considering Locki, nodejs/node#8798. It seems like Locki needs to mature a little more.

I do agree with adding localization though.

[chikathreesix]

Thanks @keithamus and @vieiralucas!
Understood how you guys feel. I will consider how Locki can integrate with Github.

Hi @aaronsofaly,
Yes, that's the one. Actually, most things discussed there were already solved.

[chikathreesix]

Hi Chai community members,

After getting lots of feedbacks, we have changed our direction and just launched this product as the beta.
https://gitlocalize.com/

Check out the video on the homepage to see how it works. GitLocalize pulls from your repo, parses markdown files into trackable chunks and links original copies and translations automatically. Also, it provides a split view optimized for translating long-format docs and sends a pull request back to the repo.

I believe GitLocalize would fit more to your needs!