Contributing with translations

(draft document to know more about making official translations / brouillon de document explicatif sur la création de traductions officielles)

Here is a few informations about what you should know if you plan to make a translation that will be "officially" distributed with the Scenari programs :

• Basically, we will give you a couple of simple XML file with about 1000-1500 phrases (total), you write the words in your home language beside in between the "<target>" tags, it will take a couple of days to translate and check. You don't need to know any programming, you can edit it with any text editor or some advanced "XLIFF editors". here is an example of the biggest file for French -> English translation : http://scenari-platform.org/trac/dev-core/browser/trunk/Bui_Localization/en-US/locale/SCENARIcore/SCENARIcore.xliff

• The most important is to be able to update the translations, at least for major versions : around 5%-20% of the text will change depending on the version. While having new language is very helpful for users, we can not take the risk that the language will "suddenly disappear" if we have no one available to maintain the version, so you should be aware that we will need your help again, ideally about 4 or 5 times a year for a couple of hours every time.

• It would be even better if we could have more than 1 partner for every translation, at least someone else who is available to read and comment or to continue the translation if the maintainer is no longer available.

• It helps to be familiar with Scenari programs because you know where the things will appear, you know in what particular context the small words or phrase will be used, and you can do a bit of testing.

• The original Scenari language is French, that means it would be best if you can understand it, but i think it's still OK if you translate from the English translation.

• It will translate the core Scenari applications (SCENARIchain, SCENARIbuilder, the SCENARIapps...), and for official translations, you will be able to select the language directly during the installation. But document model translations works a bit differently, and need to be done separately for any already existing model you would want to use.

• Also you could want to make just "an unofficial translation" that would not be auto-installed with Scenari but that you could use for yourself in "SCENARIapps", the standalone publishing chains applications produced from SCENARIbuilder.

To sum up, contributions for translations are extremely helpful, cost nothing more than your time, are easy to do, but it's a long term partnership. If you are ready and agree with the above, write a mail to info@… before starting any work on it.