Hi all,
Many thanks to all who recently offered to help with the translation of
BlueQuartz GUI into new and so far unsupported languages.
To make things easier for everyone who wants to contribute we set up a webpage
that allows you to view the progress of the translation for various languages
and to directly make your contributions through it:
http://bluequartzmirror.smd.net:8080/
The page allows you to either download the language files and edit them on
your own PC and once done you can upload them again. Or you can edit the
language files directly through a web browser (which is recommended).
Changes that someone makes are added as "suggestions" first and need to be
approved by a moderator or by the person who administrates the translation
into a certain language.
The big benefit here is that the work can be spread upon different shoulders
and people can see what others have already worked on. So ideally nobody has
to start from scratch and do it all alone.
The website has been populated with the latest *.po files from the SVN
repository of BlueQuartz and this is what we got right now:
English:
100% complete
Japanese:
79-100% complete. The encoding of the *.PO files is currently in a format
that's not fully compatible with the web frontend. Hence it shows a
percentage of less than 100%. We'll fix that later.
German:
84% complete. BUT: The translation was started by a non native German speaker,
so grammar and spelling need to be improved. Also has corrupted or missing
umlauts which need to be fixed.
French:
57% complete. This may be misleading as well and what's there needs to be
checked by a native French speaker.
Spanish:
34% complete. This may be misleading as well, as I don't comprehend enough
Spanish to make any statement about the quality of the translation.
Other languages:
0% But don't hesitate if you want BlueQuartz to be available in your preferred
language which may not yet be supported. Start a new translation and
eventually other likeminded people will jump in to assist.
If you want to translate BlueQuartz into a language that is not yet listed on
the site, then please let us know and we'll add that language as well.
How to:
======
1.) If you want to contribute, please register an account on that site. Once
you received your email activation key you can activate that account and can
start using the GUI.
2.) If you want to help with the translation of your own native language (or
one you are *very* fluent in!): Speak up here we give you administrator
rights for the language in question. This gives you more administrative
options. If multiple people want to work on any given language, then that's
fine, but try to organize the work between participants to make best use of
your time and efforts.
3.) Editing the files through the GUI is prefered as this will guarantee
a 'what you see is what you get' effect which makes sure that special
characters are not lost during import. If you intend to download the *.po
files for offline editing and later upload, then make sure that your editing
software adds a header into the *.po file that will retain any special
characters (umlauts, accents, special characters) during import. KBabel and
POedit can do this if configured correctly.
4.) To "fill in the blanks" you should also open up the English version of the
*.po files on the webpage and possibly put two browser windows side by side
so that you can directly see what needs to be translated and how it's worded
in the English original.
5.) Once a language is 100% complete and has been OK'ed for usage by a native
speaker of that language it'll be uploaded to the BlueQuartz SVN by one of
the BlueQuartz project maintainers.
So lets get busy. :o)
--
With best regards,
Michael Stauber