implement and document a process for translators

[chadwhitacre]

Now that our app is i18n'd (#957), we need to implement and document a process for making and maintaining translations. Front-runner at this point is to use https://www.transifex.com/.

Current Process

• touch i18n/xx.po && make i18n_update
• edit i18n/xx.po
• submit a PR

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[Changaco]

From @ericmeltzer in #2647:

What's our login info for Transifex? Can someone DM it to me?

I can't find any trace of us already having a Transifex account, nor that we've agreed to pay for one.

The other proposal in #957 was to use https://translatewiki.net/.

[ericmeltzer]

@Changaco OK, I'll sign up for one. Transifex is free for open source projects 💃

[ahmgeek]

i've translated MPC-HC to arabic at transifex, and now discource, i can help translating gittip.
when it possible just drop me a line.

[chadwhitacre]

Thanks so much, @ahmgeek! I started poking at Transifex today. Looks like it will take some infrastructure work to get setup. I think we want to upload a po file as part of our build and deploy pipeline.

[chadwhitacre]

http://docs.transifex.com/developer/client/

[chadwhitacre]

I looked into the story with @transifex going closed-source. I've reached out to @glezos on Twitter to see if we can convince him/them to go the open product route instead. :-)

[ahmgeek]

👍 I hope you reach something with them.

[glezos]

All, not much have changed since the original post on going closed-source. There is extremely little interest in an open-source version of Transifex. All major open-source projects which would have hosted their own version are happy on Transifex.com. It's really as simple as that.

We do plan to start open-source parts of the platform (like the file formats). I hope we'll do that sooner than later.

[chadwhitacre]

All major open-source projects which would have hosted their own version are happy on Transifex.com.

@glezos Thanks for showing up! But I feel like you don't understand what I'm asking for. :-(

We don't want to host our own version of Transifex. We want to pay you to use Transifex.com as a product, and we want to participate in development of Transifex.com.

No-one hosts their own version of Gittip.com, but the source is still open—it's this current repo! Here are some more open products:

• Reddit
  https://github.com/reddit/reddit
• Balanced Dashboard
  https://github.com/balanced/balanced-dashboard
• Sentry
  https://github.com/getsentry/sentry
• Read the Docs
  https://github.com/rtfd/readthedocs.org

The reason we at Gittip prefer using open products is that it gives us better access to your development process, so on the one hand we can make tickets and possibly even PRs for things we care about, and on the other hand we can see inside your company so we can understand how our needs for Transifex.com fit into your overall plan for the product. Check out Balanced's "open company" page for more about the challenges and benefits of building an open product.

@glezos Sounds like you got burned trying to run Transifex as an open-source project. But open products are different, and that's what I'm inviting you to do: make Transifex.com an open product. Waddya say? :-)

[chadwhitacre]

@gittip team: On transifex/transifex-old-core#206, @ecarreras points to http://weblate.org/en/, which is an open product that we could pay for on Gittip. :-)

[chadwhitacre]

Scratch that, there's no hosted version of Weblate. It's just an open-source project, not an open product. :-/

[chadwhitacre]

Maybe @nijel is interested in making Weblate an open product? :-)

[chadwhitacre]

Two more options:

http://pootle.translatehouse.org/
https://translations.launchpad.net/

Year-old roundup of Transifex, Pootle, and Launchpad:

http://www.worddelights.com/blog/gnome-outreach-program-for-women/translation-management-tools-transifex-pootle-and-launchpad-a-comparison-of-features

[chadwhitacre]

@patcon introduced https://www.localeapp.com/ at #957 (comment). I'm catching up with that ticket now ...

[chadwhitacre]

Yeah! Quite interesting convo between representatives of different L10n platforms over there. :-)

[chadwhitacre]

There is a hosted version of Weblate. :D

[ericmeltzer]

Hey so I'll wait on signing up for transifex then? I love their UI and am unfamiliar with the other tools mentioned, but I'll keep cranking on the Chinese translation either way.

[chadwhitacre]

IRC

[chadwhitacre]

We decided in IRC to move forward with Transifex.

Sorry @nijel. :-( We considered Weblate, since we could pay you via Gittip. Once Gittip itself is sustainably funded, then we will be able to prioritize open products and especially Gittip users in our purchasing decisions. Until then, we need to chose based on maturity and usability of the product, so that we don't further decrease our chances of reaching sustainability. We'll get there! :-)

[nijel]

@whit537 I'm fine with that, choose whatever you prefer. As you could find at http://weblate.org/en/hosting/ there is free hosting offer for free software. I host several commercial software there as well (I'm not sure about your licensing, so that's why I'm mentioning both options).

And about usability, in two months new release of Weblate with rewritten user interface will be available, it's currently shown at https://demo.weblate.org/ (though some minor pages are not yet working there).

[chadwhitacre]

Heard from a Transifex bizdev (after setting up a new account as part of the rename):

Hope this note finds you well. I appreciate your interest in Transifex and thank you for signing up :) There are a number of payment companies that use Transifex, and I'm interested to learn more about Gratipay. I really like the idea of your service btw.

Feel free to contact me with any questions you might have regarding Transifex. Do you have anything I can help with today? Let me know, thanks!

Look forward to hearing from you soon!

My response:

Thanks for getting in touch, Nick! We've got our app pretty well i18n'd, and we have a few translations contributed as straight po files. We're excited to get on board with Transifex so we can open up our translation process to our wider user community. You can follow along with our progress on integration here on this ticket:

#2642

We're an open company and try to do everything in public on GitHub if possible. Any chance any Transifex devs would be interested in doing some "engineering as marketing" and contributing a PR to help us with the integration? :-)

https://gratipay.freshdesk.com/helpdesk/tickets/1210

[chadwhitacre]

Good hearing from you and thanks for getting back to me so quickly. That is all exciting stuff, congratulations. I will definitely be checking in when I can.

Very cool, Transifex is a very fan of the open source community-we were incepted through it.

Hm, not really sure. I know they are quite busy with Transifex, but I will ask. Anything else I can help you with?

Me:

Nope, good at this point, thanks Nick! :-)

[Changaco]

The Transifex integration is done: https://www.transifex.com/projects/p/gratipay-com/

Now we need to announce it in a blog post.

[rohitpaulk]

👍 !

[chadwhitacre]

https://medium.com/gratipay-blog/translating-gratipay-c1d350d1b764
https://www.facebook.com/Gratipay/posts/531527970316498
https://twitter.com/Gratipay/status/527195041333530624
https://plus.google.com/b/104524895706770139568/104524895706770139568/posts/TQUGMGeSJ6V