Quick Starting Guide for the extension translator
From BabelWiki
You are very welcome on this site and community. Here are the main points that you need to begin your translation job. When you need more information, click on the links. Alternatively, ask for help on the forums, use the shoutbox or the irc, contact the admin team.
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Choose an extension
Assuming you have already registered on BabelZilla, you can go now to this page. Thus you can get a metrics page with various data, where you can see which extensions need translation for your language.
Pick and click the one you feel like working on.
Register for its translation
You are requested to register as translator for your language. Click the appropriate link. The developer of the extension is automatically notified by mail that a new translator has registered.
- If there is already one translator or translation team for this extension and you wish to join, you have to send a PM to the main translator (his nick is a green link) so that he can add you to the team.
See files to translate
Now you are on the page displaying the list of all files that need translation. They are typically xxx.dtd and xxx.properties (sometimes some other formats) but you have not to worry about that. Click on one file name and you can start the translation game.
Enjoy the translation game
All you have to do is to fill the yellow-backgrounded fields with your best possible translation, under the English string.
Sometimes, the string you have to translate is just the same as in your own language. Of course you can copy-paste with the usual keyboard shortcuts, but you can also click on the Copy link
and the field is automatically filled with the original string.
You can translate but partially and resume some time later, but in any case do not forget to click on the save button!
If the file consists of more than 50 strings, the file will be spread over multiple pages. By clicking ‘Next’ after completing a page you will move to the next page. The WTS will automatically save any changes you have made to the page you are leaving.
If you have received an update notification and visit the updated WTS pages of an extension, it is possible that a large file only contains a limited number of new strings, which are sometimes hard to find. For cases like this you may want to only see the untranslated strings. By toggling the view to ‘Untranslated’ you can do so; by clicking ‘All’ you can bring back the normal view. A few notes to this feature:
- The WTS will remember your last setting and open a file in the view you last used.
- Unfortunately, comments are not shown when viewing only untranslated strings. If a file contains comments and you want to see them, switch to ‘All’.
If you want to go to the files overview after finishing a locale file, just click ‘Files’.
Same player shoots again
Of course, you are supposed to keep on doing the same with every string from every file. Note that you can find help adding as many translator friends as you wish (how to do that). Now you have completed all translations for all files, reaching the green glorious 100% done for all files.
Great! But this is the moment to review and test.
Review and correct
First you can push the translation status to the appropriate step in the dropdown menu.
There should be someone from your language team (we have a certain number of different language forums on BabelZilla where you can communicate in your own language with friends) that can review and possibly correct typos and other things in your translation, either by having him/her registered as other translator (see how to do that) or simply by reporting and suggesting on the appropriate forum.
Create a test build including your translation
This is a delicate and somewhat technical point. Note that you can ask for help for this step, any more experienced member can do that for you or explain better.
- Download the .xpi (the extension itself as provided by the developer)
- Download you own locale ("locale.tar")
- Considering that .xpi file is but a kind of .zip file, open the xpi with a file archiver program (more about this)
- Open the chrome.manifest file with a decent text editor (more about this) and add your own locale line in it.
- Open the locale.tar (another kind of archive again) and extract the xx-XX or xx folder containing your precious translation
- Drop your locale folder inside the locale folder of the extension, at the same level as the en-US subfolder.
- Re-pack your xpi with care (more about this)
- If your locale is new, you will have to add a line it in the chrome.manifest file
Test your translation
Once your test extension is repacked, the necessary step is to test your translation in order to see if everything is displaying fine. It is recommended to test anything in progress or unstable on a clean new disposable profile (how to get a new profile). If you have issues when testing, you are welcome to report (in English) on the forum dedicated to the extension, so that the developer and other members know about what you experienced.
Of course it is another occasion to realize that your translation needs to be improved or corrected, so you can stil go back to the files and make the necessay adjustments.
Set your translation as released
Once you have corrected little things like typos, be reviewed by some other member and when you think everything is OK, it is very important you push the status of your translation on "Released" because as soon as you do it, the developer is automatically notified by mail that your translation is ready for use.
Maintain and update
Now that you have taken in charge the translation of one extension, it would be nice of you to maintain this translation on a long term. You will be automatically notified by mail when the developer submits an update: there is generally much less work to do with updates, and they happen occasionally. To check which of your translations need updates, click on "My translations" tab, then have a look at the status column.
Be proud of being the official translator of an extension for your language!
