mirror of https://github.com/zulip/zulip.git
169 lines
7.0 KiB
Markdown
169 lines
7.0 KiB
Markdown
# Translation Guidelines
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Zulip's has full support for Unicode (and partial support for RTL
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languages), so you can use your preferred language everywhere in
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Zulip. We also translate the Zulip UI into more than a dozen major
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languages, including Spanish, German, Hindi, French, Chinese, Russian,
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and Japanese, and we're always excited to add more. If you speak a
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language other than English, your help with translating Zulip is be
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greatly appreciated!
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If you are interested in knowing about the technical end-to-end
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tooling and processes for tagging strings for translation and syncing
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translations in Zulip, read about [Internationalization for
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Developers](../translating/internationalization.html).
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## Translators' workflow
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These are the steps you should follow if you want to help translate
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Zulip:
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1. Sign up for [Transifex](https://www.transifex.com) and ask to join
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the [Zulip project on
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Transifex](https://www.transifex.com/zulip/zulip/), requesting access
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to any languages you'd like to contribute to (or add new ones).
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1. Join [#translation][translation-stream] in the [Zulip development
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community server](../contributing/chat-zulip-org.html), and say hello.
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That stream is also the right place for any questions, updates on your
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progress, reporting problematic strings, etc.
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1. Wait for a maintainer to approve your Transifex access; this
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usually takes less than a day. You should then be able to access
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Zulip's dashboard in Transifex.
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1. Translate the strings for your language in Transifex.
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1. If possible, test your translations (details below).
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1. Ask in Zulip for a maintainer to sync the strings from Transifex,
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merge them to master, and deploy the update to chat.zulip.org so
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you can verify them in action there.
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Some useful tips for your translating journey:
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- Follow your language's [translation guide](#translation-style-guides).
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Keeping it open in a tab while translating is very handy. If one
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doesn't exist one, write one as you go; they're easiest to write as
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you go along and will help any future translators a lot.
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- Don't translate variables or code (usually preceded by a `%`, or inside
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HTML tags `<...>`); just keep them verbatim.
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- When in doubt, ask for context in
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[#translation](https://chat.zulip.org/#narrow/stream/58-translation) in
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the [Zulip development community server](../contributing/chat-zulip-org.html).
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- If there are multiple possible translations for a term, search for it in
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the *Concordance* tool (the button with a magnet in the top right corner).
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It will show if anyone translated that term before, so we can achieve good
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consistency with all the translations, no matter who makes them.
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- Pay attention to capital letters and punctuation. Details make the
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difference!
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- Take advantage of the hotkeys the Transifex Web Editor provides, such as
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`Tab` for saving and going to the next string.
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### Testing translations
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This section assumes you have a
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[Zulip development environment](../development/overview.html) set up;
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if setting one up is a problem for you, ask in chat.zulip.org and we
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can usually just deploy the latest translations there.
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* First, download the updated resource files from Transifex using the
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`tools/i18n/sync-translations` command (it will require some [initial
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setup](../translating/internationalization.html#transifex-cli-setup)). This
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command will download the resource files from Transifex and replace
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your local resource files with them, and then compile them. You can
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now test your translation work in the Zulip UI.
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There are a few ways to see your translations in the Zulip UI:
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* You can insert the language code as a URL prefix. For example, you
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can view the login page in German using
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`http://localhost:9991/de/login/`. This works for any part of the
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Zulip UI, including portico (logged-out) pages.
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* For Zulip's logged-in UI (i.e. the actual webapp), you can [pick the
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language](https://zulipchat.com/help/change-your-language) in the
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Zulip UI.
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* If your system has languages configured in your OS/browser, Zulip's
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portico (logged-out) pages will automatically use your configured
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language. Note that we only tag for translation strings in pages
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that individual users need to use (e.g. `/login/`, `/register/`,
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etc.), not marketing pages like `/features/`.
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* In case you need to understand how the above interact, Zulip figures
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out the language the user requests in a browser using the following
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prioritization (mostly copied from the Django docs):
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1. It looks for the language code as a url prefix (e.g. `/de/login/`).
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2. It looks for the `LANGUAGE_SESSION_KEY` key in the current user's
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session (the Zulip language UI option ends up setting this).
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3. It looks for the cookie named 'django_language'. You can set a
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different name through the `LANGUAGE_COOKIE_NAME` setting.
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4. It looks for the `Accept-Language` HTTP header in the HTTP request
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(this is how browsers tell Zulip about the OS/browser language).
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* Using an HTTP client library like `requests`, `cURL` or `urllib`,
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you can pass the `Accept-Language` header; here is some sample code to
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test `Accept-Language` header using Python and `requests`:
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```
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import requests
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headers = {"Accept-Language": "de"}
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response = requests.get("http://localhost:9991/login/", headers=headers)
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print(response.content)
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```
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This can occassionally be useful for debugging.
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### Translation style guides
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We maintain translation style guides for Zulip, giving guidance on how
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Zulip should be translated into specific languages (e.g. what word to
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translate words like "stream" to), with reasoning, so that future
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translators can understand and preserve those decisions:
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* [Chinese](chinese.html)
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* [French](french.html)
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* [German](german.html)
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* [Hindi](hindi.html)
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* [Polish](polish.html)
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* [Russian](russian.html)
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* [Spanish](spanish.html)
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Some translated languages don't have these, but we highly encourage
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translators for new languages (or those updating a language) write a
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style guide as they work (see [our docs on this
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documentation](../documentation/overview.html) for how to submit
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your changes), since it's easy to take notes as you translate, and
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doing so greatly increases the ability of future translators to update
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the translations in a consistent way.
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### Capitalization
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We expect that all the English translatable strings in Zulip are
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properly capitalized in a way consistent with how Zulip does
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capitalization in general. This means that:
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* The first letter of a sentence or phrase should be capitalized.
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- Correct: "Manage streams"
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- Incorrect: "Manage Streams"
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* All proper nouns should be capitalized.
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- Correct: "This is Zulip"
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- Incorrect: "This is zulip"
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* All common words like URL, HTTP, etc. should be written in their
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standard forms.
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- Correct: "URL"
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- Incorrect: "Url"
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The Zulip test suite enforces these capitalization guidelines in the
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webapp codebase [in our test
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suite](../testing/testing.html#other-test-suites)
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(`./tools/check-capitalization`; `tools/lib/capitalization.py` has
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some exclude lists, e.g. `IGNORED_PHRASES`).
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[translation-stream]: https://chat.zulip.org/#narrow/stream/58-translation
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