I.   What it is.
II.  What it can.
III. What it need.

I.   What it is.

  I've started bulding multilingual translation system adjusted to 
  documentation of POV-Ray. I remeber that some of POVers (including me) 
  promised some time ago that when 3.5 will be released they will translate 
  documentation to their own languages. I think that's the time. But I think 
  it could be wasting of time when each translator would build own system with
  own tracker for changes, own design, etc. etc. I want to simplify it to left
  as small amount of work as possible for busy POVers. I remember there are 
  some national communities so perhaps it is worth.

II.  What it can.

  It will track changes on available documentation and highlight changed 
  parts. It will allow to view history of changes.

  It will allow translation in any order and any part of documentation
  including comments in inlined POV source code, description for images etc. 
  It will not allow translation of not language dependant part of html tags or
  chapter numbering.

  It will use language characters during translation in forms. It will output 
  unicode codes for languages during final files generation.

  It will track changes.

  It will be accessible for allowed users via WWW. It will export (probably by
  sent to mail) ready to use translated documentation. As long as sequence 
  will not be translated it will be outputed in original.

  It will be possible to translate in cooperation (more than one translator 
  per language). No more than one translator per section at the same time.

  It will use javascript, cookies, forms.

  It will not allow (I hope only at begining) languages not written from left 
  to right.

  It will be ready to translate (little later) platform specific chapters and
  patch documentations.

  It will be base on unix documentation html files unless I get something more
  from the Team.

  It will generate some statistic like how many to translate in each chapter.

III. What it need.

  I need translators. If you want to help in building community support send 
  to me your:
    - email
    - real name or nick
    - speed estimation, for example: sentence per week, chapter per day, 1000 
      characters in an hour

  This week I will gather initial list of translators and finish system
  bulding so translation will start probably next monday. I will start no more
  than one translation/language per day becouse I have to test/verify with 
  translator some language specific features like page coding, characters or 
  internet browser cooperation.

  If the list of workers will be really big I will setup some mail-driven 
  list or ask the team for use povray.documentation.inbuilt or separated 
  group on this server.

  I need comments and suggestions.

ABX

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ABX wrote:
> I.   What it is.
> 
>   I've started building multilingual translation system adjusted to
>   documentation of POV-Ray. I remember that some of POVers (including me)
>   promised some time ago that when 3.5 will be released they will
>   translate documentation to their own languages. I think that's the time.
>   But I think it could be wasting of time when each translator would build
>   own system with own tracker for changes, own design, etc. etc. I want to
>   simplify it to left as small amount of work as possible for busy POVers.
>   I remember there are some national communities so perhaps it is worth.

 That's a very nice initiative! I'm not really sure it is worth the effort, 
but well, it's *your* effort... :)
  
  I myself started to act as coordinator for the spanish translation, 
mainly because it seems there is not another volunteer. I setup a little 
site with php to handle the most basic tasks, but I was not planning any 
automated system nor anything complex, only a web page to gather some other 
volunteers, to help coordinating the overall style, and also to collect the 
sections translated.  It has a "translation status" page for the sections 
of the manual, a common dictionary for technical and ambiguous words (we 
have the added problem of multiple spanish variants for the american 
countries). The work method proposed was that each translator must give the 
section translated over the original HTML page, being free to choose the 
tool (text editor or HTML editor) to do the job, so my task as coordinator 
must be as simple as putting all the html files together.
 
> II.  What it can.
>   It will be possible to translate in cooperation (more than one
>   translator per language). No more than one translator per section at the
>   same time.

  Perfect! It will be also nice if it will support a "coordinator" for each 
language to "verify" the translations, or to permit some other registered 
translator to do it, to help homogenizing the style.

> III. What it need.
> 
>   I need translators. If you want to help in building community support
>   send to me your:
>     - email
>     - real name or nick
>     - speed estimation, for example: sentence per week, chapter per day,
>     1000
>       characters in an hour

  Count me in, but I don't fully understand this part. Are you thinking on 
hosting a single multilingual system, and coordinating yourself all the 
translations? Perhaps it will be better to create a system that permits 
custom installs for each language, so each translation can be hosted and 
coordinated separately. I think this is more apropiated, specially to help 
building local comunities.
 
>   If the list of workers will be really big I will setup some mail-driven
>   list or ask the team for use povray.documentation.inbuilt or separated
>   group on this server.

  Well, an official support is always nice. There is also the group 
p.international, which is not much used and perhaps can serve to coordinate 
your (very interesting) project.  Also, perhaps the multilingual system can 
reside at povray.org, if it is going to be a single system for all the 
translations. This can be really great too, but I'm willing it's too much 
work for the Team. 
  
-- 
Jaime Vives Piqueres

La Persistencia de la Ignorancia
http://www.ignorancia.org

Post a reply to this message

On Mon, 05 Aug 2002 15:41:23 +0200, Jaime Vives Piqueres
<jai### [at] ignoranciaorg> wrote:
>   I myself started to act as coordinator for the spanish translation, 
> mainly because it seems there is not another volunteer.


encontrada'. What is current status of your translation ?

> >   It will be possible to translate in cooperation (more than one
> >   translator per language). No more than one translator per section at the
> >   same time.
>
>   Perfect! It will be also nice if it will support a "coordinator" for each 
> language to "verify" the translations, or to permit some other registered 
> translator to do it, to help homogenizing the style.

I plan to automatically attach header and footer for translated output with
icons to other language versions, links to main POV-related sites, and with
something like : "Want to note about not translated part or wrong translation?
mailto: somebody"

> > III. What it need.
> > 
> >   I need translators. If you want to help in building community support
> >   send to me your:
> >     - email
> >     - real name or nick
> >     - speed estimation, for example: sentence per week, chapter per day,
> >     1000
> >       characters in an hour

I forgot to mention I also need traget language name :-)

>  Count me in, but I don't fully understand this part. Are you thinking on 
> hosting a single multilingual system, and coordinating yourself all the 
> translations?

Nearly. I want host system to navigate translation with export to different
location (on povray.org? on some country location? translator location? I
don't know). The only effort from me is to build, setup system, gather
volounteers and generate incremental from time to time. It will be
database-driven with database engine in my company.

> Perhaps it will be better to create a system that permits 
> custom installs for each language, so each translation can be hosted and 
> coordinated separately. I think this is more apropiated, specially to help 
> building local comunities.

I'm building my system with easy in use 4GL. Writting it more universal (for
example in PHP) would be also more difficoult for me and time consuming at
this moment.

>  Well, an official support is always nice.

Yes :-)

ABX

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Jaime Vives Piqueres wrote:

> >   If the list of workers will be really big I will setup some mail-driven
> >   list or ask the team for use povray.documentation.inbuilt or separated
> >   group on this server.

That's what those groups are for. Use them. The POV-Team is clearly
dedicated to reaching a large multi-national user base and it is
these kinds of things that will help that goal.
 
>   Well, an official support is always nice. There is also the group
> p.international, which is not much used and perhaps can serve to coordinate
> your (very interesting) project.  Also, perhaps the multilingual system can
> reside at povray.org, if it is going to be a single system for all the
> translations. This can be really great too, but I'm willing it's too much
> work for the Team.

If it is a simple matter of hosting at povray.org I can try to pull some
strings with the POV-Team. If not officialy sponsered at povray.org we might
be able to offer them as a seperate resource unnofficialy from the TAG
website. You guys have a lot of work to do before we worry about hosting
though....

-- 
Ken Tyler

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On Mon, 05 Aug 2002 07:06:13 -0700, Ken <tyl### [at] pacbellnet> wrote:
> You guys have a lot of work to do before we worry about hosting though....

That's very true.

ABX

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ABX wrote:


> encontrada'. What is current status of your translation ?

  No, that was the site for the former (and failed) translation for version 
3.1. The proposal for the new translation HQ site is at:

  http://www.ignorancia.org/traduccion

 But as I said it's only a quick sketch made to gather some comments from
the other volunteers: we haven't started to translate yet (it would be nice 
also to wait for the multiplataform HTML version of the docs). 

  As I have not started any real work yet, I can transform that site onto a 
coordination center for the spanish translators using your system for the 
real translation work. I can hold still the "style dictionary", the "table 
of contents" translation for homogeneity purposes, and perhaps translating 
to spanish some basic instructions to use your multilingual system.

> I plan to automatically attach header and footer for translated output
> with icons to other language versions, links to main POV-related sites,
> and with something like : "Want to note about not translated part or wrong
> translation? mailto: somebody"

  That's nice, but I think it's better to revise it before publishing, at 
least for the spanish translation, because of the commented problems about 
different spanish variants. But I can also coordinate spanish discussions 
on povray.international to verify/correct translated sections, and then use 
your system to correct the revised sentences.

  This is starting to look promissing.... I suppose, from your already 
demonstrated dedication to POV, that I can trust your long-term interest on 
actually finishing this system.  It would be nice to reduce my work to 
simply coordinate the spanish translators using your system.. :)

-- 
Jaime Vives Piqueres

La Persistencia de la Ignorancia
http://www.ignorancia.org

Post a reply to this message

On Wed, 07 Aug 2002 12:23:06 +0200, Jaime Vives Piqueres
<jai### [at] ignoranciaorg> wrote:
>  This is starting to look promissing....

Yes. I have received generic documentation format and at this moment I can
export in the same format as I received so it could be posssible to send back
translated documentation to the team to perform automated generation of all
documentation like povray.org-html, unix-html, chm-html, pdf etc.
I'm still adjusting database indexing and structure for best performance and
finishing scripts for my own language. I will be an alfa-tester for my system
and probably you will be for beta. Unfortunatelly I have no other volounteers
for it. I suprpised since I always thought french community is strong. Have
they already 3.5 documentation translated ?

> It would be nice to reduce my work to 
> simply coordinate the spanish translators using your system.. :)

That's exactly what was my idea at begining (except increasing community).

ABX

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ABX wrote:

> On Wed, 07 Aug 2002 12:23:06 +0200, Jaime Vives Piqueres
> <jai### [at] ignoranciaorg> wrote:
>>  This is starting to look promissing....
> 
> Yes. I have received generic documentation format and at this moment I can
> export in the same format as I received so it could be posssible to send
> back translated documentation to the team to perform automated generation
> of all documentation like povray.org-html, unix-html, chm-html, pdf etc.

  Great!

> I'm still adjusting database indexing and structure for best performance
> and finishing scripts for my own language. I will be an alfa-tester for my
> system and probably you will be for beta. 

  Yes, count me in. I've also just informed the spanish volunteers about it 
trough p.international, and perhaps some of them wiil be able to do some 
betatesting.

> Unfortunatelly I have no other
> volounteers for it. I suprpised since I always thought french community is
> strong. Have they already 3.5 documentation translated ?

  Sure not. Perhaps this is not a very good group to discuss this. I my 
self wasn't subscribed until my reply to your first messsage on p.g. 
disapeared... Can you repost your original message to p.international 
labeled as [global],[international] or whatever?
 

-- 
Jaime Vives Piqueres

La Persistencia de la Ignorancia
http://www.ignorancia.org

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Hi ABX!

    I'm fresh out of povray.international. Jaime alerted us to your project.
I really must visit this group more often. :)

    Your project sounds very complicated, but also very interesting. It will
certainly be impressive when you get it up and running. I'd gladly give it a
test on behalf of the Spanish language effort.

--
Anthony

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> I suprpised since I always thought french community is strong.
> Have they already 3.5 documentation translated ?

I understand that they've been working on updating their Megapov doc
translation to reflect the changes in 3.5, so they're very close to having
it ready. Closer than any of us, at any rate.

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