Language Moderators Wanted!

[GregA]

I have been following all the great work that's being done by Community members to translate ZCS into new languages and thought maybe it's time we try for a little more formal collaboration. Anyone game to take on a more official language moderator or contributor role? I can think of alot of benefits- single point of contact, new languages sooner, conserve effort, more completeness, etc.

If anyone is interested, I have put together a quick outline on the Language Wiki of how we might do it in the near term.
+ Language Wiki main
+ Outline

Please PM me with suggestions or let me know what language you'd like to Moderate / contribute on.

[goetzi]

At the moment I don't have time for translating/moderating. But there is one thing I have asked for in the past: A versioning system for the translations where the contributors have access.

What I read in the outline sounds like the moderator has to be this versioning system. I already discussed this with KevinH and he said "something will come...". A SVN for the translations would be a great thing. I experienced that the german files where translated twice, that's very annoying and wouldn't have happened if there would have been something like a SVN. Sure, if the whole thing would have been moderated it wouldn't have happened too. But a SVN would be a great help for the translators and an easement for the moderators.

goetzi

[GregA]

You're absolutely right that we need source control... we are looking at a way to do this. In the short term I'm hoping we can start with single points of contact.

[andyc]

Recently, we created a new project[1] in SourceForge called Zimbra Xtras that will allow external contributors to freely add/remove/modify translations (and other contributions). Language moderators who have a signed contributor agreement on file will get write access to the Xtras repository.

To bootstrap the translations work, we have discussed internally moving the translated files over to the Zimbra Xtras project. The idea is that within the Xtras repository, there will be a ZimbraTranslations/ directory that will act as the home of all translations work. The structure and content of this directory will be designed to be easily accessible to both translators and people looking for language packs to install on their deployed Zimbra servers.

From our discussions we're proposing the following dir structure in the SourceForge project:

  ZimbraTranslations/
    data/
      English_en/
        help/
        keys/
        messages/
        ...
      Finnish_fi/
      ...
    docs/ -- docs about the project: instructions, etc
      ...
    src/
      java/ -- current i18n tools source from Ajax to start
      ...
    build.xml

The top-level directory was chosen such that it will not conflict with anything in the existing Zimbra repository.

In general, the initial directory structure is designed to be a standard development project. So the source code for various tools are in src/ and
the actual files for translation are in data/. In all cases, we have chosen names that are simple to understand even for people that don't have any
technical background but want to find resources for their particular language.

Note: The English data files will NOT live in the Zimbra Xtras repository at SourceForge. The originals will live in the main Zimbra repository as they do now and be pushed to the appropriate locations in the Xtras project automatically. This is a convenience for translators so they don't have to go to multiple places to get started. However, we'll put a README.txt file in that part of the tree warning contributors that the files are for reference purposes only and are overwritten periodically.

To start, the build.xml Ant script will simply compile the tools and check the completeness of the current translations. Later, we can have the build generate release packages to make it easy for people to deploy language packs on their servers.

How do people feel about this as a start? If it seems fine, I will start working on moving the files to their new locations in the Xtras project soon.

[1] http://sourceforge.net/projects/zimbra-xtras/

[goetzi]

Ok, I am back.
I now can do translations again. If you are still searching for a german language moderator I am your man.

I saw that you set up a SVN for the translations - very cool! What do I have to do to get an account with write permissions?

[GregA]

Awesome! All I need is your sourceforge ID and I can add you to the project.

feel free to PM, etc

Cheers, Greg

Originally Posted by goetzi

Ok, I am back.
I now can do translations again. If you are still searching for a german language moderator I am your man.

I saw that you set up a SVN for the translations - very cool! What do I have to do to get an account with write permissions?

[hanysys]

Hi,

I have installed Zimbra and really found it marvelous, so I looked for Arabic translation in the translation repository but didn't then I read your mail about Langauge moderators and I really want to help in translating into Arabic ...

Another thing, I want to ask if there is a mechanism in Zimbra for language switching?? I mean if an user wants to have Arabic interface but another user wants English interface could this happen in the same server?? or the whole release would be in certain language only??

Regards
Hany

[Klug]

Originally Posted by hanysys

Another thing, I want to ask if there is a mechanism in Zimbra for language switching?? I mean if an user wants to have Arabic interface but another user wants English interface could this happen in the same server?? or the whole release would be in certain language only??

Once the language files are setup, Zimbra's default is to detect the browser language and then auto-adapt : Zimbra will appear in the same language than browser.

If you need more, check this : Bug 8018 - Add the ability for the user to override the browser locale setting

[hanysys]

Hi, Klug

Thanks very much for your reply , I found that they are working on the matter now, I hope it will be available in the nearest Zimbra releases ...

Regards
Hany

[ferryiti]

i also want to participate in Arabic Translation, But for Arabic we need to swtich direction from LTR (Left to Right) to RTL (Right To Left)