French translations

[fxbenard]

Creation of the languages folder and the french .po and .mo files

[bpongy]

Impec :-)

[martb005]

I agree... french translation could be very useful!

[fxbenard]

At least for 3 of us and probably many more ;)

[pixolin]

A .pot-file would be nice, indeed.

Do I get it right, that theme twenty twelve is based on _s?
Couldn't we just use it's languages/twentytwelve.pot then? Why isn't it added by default?

Questions upon questions…

[kovshenin]

@pixolin "Do I get it right, that theme twenty twelve is based on _s?"

No, although there are some contributions from _s to Twenty Twelve.

[mfields]

@pixolin I'm not sure that a .pot file makes sense to include in a starter theme. One of the benefits of a starter theme is that just about everything is expected to be changed by anyone using it. This gives of the benefit of being able to change markup, remove functions, and edit internationalized strings more freely than if this was intended to be a parent theme.

@Boddhi For the same reasons, I'm not sure that .po and .mo files make sense in a starter theme either. If the current strings are modified or new strings are added to the theme produced via _s then they will not be translated in the finished theme. Which could be confusing for beginners who would need to learn how to regenerate the .pot to create the .po and .mo files and manually translate. On the other hand, this could be seen as a benefit too as it would cut down on a lot of the translation work. I'm a bit mixed on this actually ...

What do others think?

[pixolin]

Hm. Of course it's a good point that a starter theme is meant to be altered anyway. Perhaps I simply stumbled upon functions.php's line 55 (or whatever it will be in a later version :)

load_theme_textdomain( '_s', get_template_directory() . '/languages' );

and was baffled not to find that directory nor any language related files.

btw, wouldn't that function result in an error if the directory is missing? (function just returns a FALSE)

[kovshenin]

and was baffled not to find that directory nor any language related files.

How about a languages directory with a readme file pointing to resources and software to generate .pot files and translate themes?

[pixolin]

Much better! May sound small-minded, but I would appreciate that.

[pixolin]

With some comment as

/**
* Place your language files here.
*
* An instruction for internationalization (localization?) can be found 
* at http://codex.wordpress.org/Translating_WordPress
*
*/

[fxbenard]

Up to you to found out if it's necessary in a starter theme, at least add the languages folder and a pot file.

This languages files are also starter files, for sure they're not definitive but at least they give a starting point to all the developpers to add quickly a translation to their themes.

developpers developp, i'm not sure they will translate the 90 strings of the theme and they will not change every sentences in it also but they might be happy to found 90% of the theme translate in their native language rather to have to start from 0%

In my real world of foreign WordPress user experience, themes come with a en_EN.po file, usually the pot file is gone and if you want a translation you have to make it, so make it from start or push the update button in poedit ?

It's a question of productivity but also of the main objective of _s, is it to help developpers to code better, faster code or to beginners to start coding ?

Up to you ? See ya

[kovshenin]

In my real world of foreign WordPress user experience, themes come with a en_EN.po file

I think en_EN is redundant since all strings are already written in English. You won't find en_EN for WordPress. You will, however find en_CA and en_UK, which makes sense.

[pixolin]

What about the .pot-file then which would leave it to the user to use and modify it (and not start from scratch)?

[kovshenin]

What about the .pot-file then which would leave it to the user to use and modify it (and not start from scratch)?

I have no strong opinion on this. I feel like it wouldn't make much sense including it in a starter theme, since most translators are familiar with tools already, and most of these tools (incl. GlotPress and Poedit) are capable of scanning for strings. If, however, a translator is not familiar with any of the translation tools, then a .pot file won't really help, right?

I would also like to find out how many of the _s based themes are released without changing or adding a single string. When I worked on a theme for my own blog, most of the things I did were CSS and some slight markup changes, but I haven't touched a string. If all themes ship with the exact same strings as _s, it would be nice to have _s translated into many languages already, that way people are shipping localized themes without even knowing that, win-win!

On the other hand, if a significant amount of people are changing strings, then shipping with translations will create a bunch of semi-localized themes, which is so confusing for many users. I'd rather have a non-localized theme, than a semi-localized one, that way my interface will look "foreign" and not "broken."

As I said, I don't have a strong opinion, so let's wait for @ianstewart and @lancewillett :)

[fxbenard]

@kovshenin sorry yes usually en_US sorry

@pixolin the pot file is probably the best way to go and some instructions, links, tools to "how to translate a WordPress Theme"

[kovshenin]

@kovshenin sorry yes usually en_US sorry

Actually en_US is what I meant, but you said en_EN so I thought I shouldn't confuse you, which I did, sorry! :) What I meant to say is that there shouldn't be a translation file for the locale used in source code, which is (most of the time) en_US, since it'll just repeat the exact same strings from the source.

[ianstewart]

How about a languages directory with a readme file pointing to resources and software to generate .pot files and translate themes?

I think this is a good step in the right direction and in my opinion should close out this issue (for now — we can revisit a sample .pot-file at a later date as @kovshenin suggests). If someone has a pull request for this (with @pixolin's readme ) that seems like it'd be worth a merge.

[pixolin]

I would enjoy to assist … if I only knew how to add new files to Github! – Sorry, looks like I just outed me as total noob. Wishing you much success on this awesome starter theme though!

[kovshenin]

If I only knew how to add new files to Github

Ping me next time you see me on IRC and I'll teach you ;)

Opened pull request for readme.txt in #73, thanks @pixolin

[ianstewart]

Closing this with the merge of #73