bitcoin.org / weusecoins.com - Call for translations !

[blockgenesis]

There has been serious work done to make both bitcoin.org and weusecoins translatable. This previous goal is now a reality!

It is now time to go with phase 2, both websites are ready to be translated in as much languages as you can.

You can find the instructions and the guidelines in the README of both website github repositories :

https://github.com/weusecoins/weusecoins
https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin.org

Please provide high quality translations
The meaning of many texts is sensitive. Providing accurate and clear translations is very important. As much as possible, and especially for bitcoin.org, it is highly recommended that each translation is reviewed by other native speakers for your languages.

Working in team
Working in team always lead to the best possible results. If you are working on a translation, you can show your ongoing work by opening an issue on the github repository so that you can receive feedback and help. And so that we don't uselessly duplicate efforts and end up with two seperate translations.

If you don't understand command line, git or HTML
You can very well translate human-readable texts in each file and ask for someone else to integrate your work and make a pull request for you. Don't hesitate to ask help of others on this thread.

Proposing changes in the meaning for bitcoin.org
If you feel some texts require improvements on bitcoin.org, please prepare a good replacement for the original english version and create a seperate pull request so that your changes can be discussed. This way, each translation will keep up-to-date with each other, based on a text that gets the best consensus.

Keeping translations up-to-date
The history of all changes in the english files can be easily seen on github.

Building a translation team?
If enough people participate to this project, perhaps could we create a bitcoin-translator group? Our mission being to make bitcoin accessible everywhere on this planet.

[blockgenesis]

Spanish translation for bitcoin.org is ongoing there if you want to help : https://github.com/ernestova/bitcoin.org

[WikileaksDude]

I think it would be a good time to update this page: https://www.weusecoins.com/getting-started.php

Some services in there are offline.. Like intersango exchange.

[Paladin69]

Covering the EU nations would be wise so they can escape the Cyprus crap as well.

[blockgenesis]

And just the general idea to have at least some good popular bitcoin websites in each language can help it to develop in as much jurisdiction as possible. This is also a very important form of decentralization. Both legal and economic decentralization.

[paraipan]

...

Thanks, will start working on the Spanish translation. Btw, an easier way to translate would be great, like having single language file.

[blockgenesis]

Thanks, will start working on the Spanish translation. Btw, an easier way to translate like having single language files would be great.

Sure. That sounds great.

However, I didn't find a way to make this approach concretely work with something with as much long texts like a website, without being problematic in some cases. A single language file is usually used for small dialogs in unified application with "english" fallback. I don't think that makes sense in our case to work this way because each translation must be "structure independant".

- English version might have pages other sections don't have (news, version history).
- We might need special styles or content adaptation for some languages.
- We should be able to create new pages, and translate them later without this page appearing in english in all translated version. This would give a very poor user experience.
- Outdated translation should not prevents us to update other languages.

There are also a few things that might work poorly with this approach or just be impossible / very hard to do with jekyll, like translating filenames (urls) and keeping links between translated pages, and generating a structured sitemap with alternate hreflang as we do now.

But if someone comes up with something better that is both easier for translator while being still functionnal for integration and collaboration, feel free to work on it and make a pull request so that it can be discussed!

[paraipan]

Thanks, will start working on the Spanish translation. Btw, an easier way to translate like having single language files would be great.

Sure. That sounds great.

However, I didn't find a way to make this approach concretely work with something with as much long texts like a website, without being problematic in some cases. A single language is usually used for small dialogs in unified application with "english" fallback. I don't think that makes sense in our case to work this way because each translation must be "structure independant".

- English version might have pages other sections don't have (news, version history).
- We might need special styles or content adaptation for some languages.
- We should be able to create new pages, and translate them later without this page appearing in english in all translated version. This would give a very poor user experience.
- Outdated translation should not prevents us to update other languages.

There are also a few things that might work poorly with this approach or just be impossible / very hard to do with jekyll, like translating filenames (urls) and keeping links between translated pages, and generating a structured sitemap with alternate hreflang as we do now.

But if someone comes up with something better that is both easier for translator while being still functionnal for integration and collaboration, feel free to work on it and make a pull request so that it can be discussed!

Ok, have to agree.


Who are you blockgenesis? Not much info on your intro post...

Hi I'm..

Wait, 450 pages, will anybody read this?

No matter, I'm a Bitcoin enthusiast since a few months. With a moderate technical knowledge. And I must say that.. Bitcoin Rocks!

[blockgenesis]

Who are you blockgenesis? Not much info on your intro post...

I'm new to the community. My fullname is Saïvann Carignan. I'm also a recent member of the foundation. And I am the one who did the multilanguage version of weusecoins and the new bitcoin.org website with the help and feedback from the community and developers. I am a french Canadian.

[paraipan]

Who are you blockgenesis? Not much info on your intro post...

I'm new to the community. My fullname is Saïvann Carignan. I'm also a recent member of the foundation. And I am the one who did the multilanguage version of weusecoins and the new bitcoin.org website with the help and feedback from the community and developers. I am a french Canadian.

Nice to meet you Saïvann, I'm Alex.

Will see what I can do to have this done in no time, in various languages.


Edit: Bitcoiners from the Rugatu community are already working on it...

http://www.rugatu.com/questions/12951/can-you-help-translate-bitcoinorg

[dserrano5]

How are multiple forks/pullreqs for the same language going to be managed? I don't think github is the most appropriate tool for this :/.

[blockgenesis]

How are multiple forks/pullreqs for the same language going to be managed? I don't think github is the most appropriate tool for this :/.

That is why I suggest people to show their work y opening an issue, or update existing issues so that people can work in team on their own branches. Not duplicating efforts.

But if that happens, people can simply compare their work, select one branch and include what they think is better from the other branch. Or we can ask contributors which branch to merge, and later get another pull request from the owner of branch #2 that would contains only improvements.

[blockgenesis]

Nice to meet you Saïvann, I'm Alex.

Will see what I can do to have this done in no time, in various languages.

Edit: Bitcoiners from the Rugatu community are already working on it...

http://www.rugatu.com/questions/12951/can-you-help-translate-bitcoinorg

Awesome

[btcven]

Who are you blockgenesis? Not much info on your intro post...

I'm new to the community. My fullname is Saïvann Carignan. I'm also a recent member of the foundation. And I am the one who did the multilanguage version of weusecoins and the new bitcoin.org website with the help and feedback from the community and developers. I am a french Canadian.

I would like to make some changes to the bitcoin.org webpage to make it mobile friendly and to make some UI improvements. How can it be done? Throgh that GitHub repo?

I will help in the Spanish translations as soon as I understand how it is being made.

[blockgenesis]

I would like to make some changes to the bitcoin.org webpage to make it moile friendly and to make some UI improvements. How can it be done? Throgh that GitHub repo?

I will help in the Spanish translations as soon as I understand how it is being done.

Just like most of open-source project that use git, you can "fork" the repository (which basically means create your own copy of our code), improve it, and later ask to merge your changes into our code by pressing the "pull request" button. Of course, you need to learn a bit how git works. But if you are not afraid of command lines, that is overall pretty easy to learn.

Also before doing a pull request, it might be good to ask for feedback and provide screenshots to see what people think of it, perhaps on this topic :
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=148712.0

[blockgenesis]

Edit: Bitcoiners from the Rugatu community are already working on it...
http://www.rugatu.com/questions/12951/can-you-help-translate-bitcoinorg

Perhaps we should tell them this to make sure we have one single place where everyone can see ongoing translations :

Don't forget to open an issue on github if you start working on a language, so that others can review your ongoing work and help improving it :
https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin.org/issues?page=1&state=open

[jonwaller]

Just for the record, I'm working on the Japanese translation for bitcoin.org right now with some people from the Tokyo Bitcoin Meetup group.

[blockgenesis]

We need people to review!

There is three translations that are almost ready to push. But we need native speakers for the languages listed below to review all sentences and report the following :

- All typos
- All improvements that can be made to make for the translations to sound more native.
- All differences in the meaning with the english version.

Italian :
https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin.org/pull/127
http://bitcoinit.us.to/it/

Russian :
https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin.org/pull/124
http://bitcoinru.us.to/ru/

Arabic :
https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin.org/issues/105
http://bitcoinar.zapto.org/ar/

[blockgenesis]

bitcoin.org is now translated in transifex user-friendly environment :
https://www.transifex.com/projects/p/bitcoinorg/

New translators are welcome in each team.

Especially the German team who has a 100% full translation but no reviewer yet. But also all other translations can benefit from more active translators and reviewers to translate changes in the website over time. Many translations are incomplete and need new contributors to complete them.