How to participate in translations

Actually, I’m taking the opportunity of this thread to ask how take part to the translation effort.
I’m doing this for other open or closed source apps or software already, and I would be happy to help here as well, especially as a new user of antennapod, with a new eye (I know from the other projects I’m working on that this is very helpful to usual translators, to me)

But my request to transiflex was denied.

Did you request to join an existing team or did you request to add a new language? New languages are often not approved when we already support the same language but for a different region. (For example, IT-Generic vs IT-Italy).

I will have a look tonight at my notifications in Transifex - I might very well have missed something.

Hi. Thanks for the reply. I think I had asked for FR-fr, but I have deleted all emails since then :).
Let me re-submit right now.

Oops, my very own mistake!!! I was denied from the Signal App Transifex team, not from the AntennaPod one. I feel really sorry now :slight_smile:

You should probably discuss with @Matth78 before doing major changes to the French translation :slight_smile: He’s the main French translator currently.

Thanks for the hint. I’m discovering how Transifex works, and so far, I have made only one suggestion with a comment (not a direct change of course, not sure I’m even allowed to do it).

@klint
You can save yourself trouble by not going down the path of figuring out how Transifex isn’t a solution that works.
One of its failing is that it allows creating every incompatible and ambiguous language code under the sun. Closed source software is the enemy of user freedom.
The Signal translation is not a good place to start for various reasons.

Hello @Klint,

I just looked and I don’t see anyway to check for new comment. :-/
Which string was concerned ? Don’t hesitate to mention me using @ symbol when doing comment, I think if you do I will have a notification and will be able to easily find it.

Right now all string are “revised” and only revisor can change them. So if there is some bad translations or you think some can be improved tell me and I will update it.
=> usually my process is to translate as soon as possible and then when app is available I check if translations are ok and if so mark them revised.

Feel free to contact me either via private messaging on the forum or on transifex. We could also create a thread specific to french translation to discuss about it and so other people can join us. (Maybe it would be better to create a discussion in transifex ?)

Transifex in my experience isn’t great for having (longer) conversations - for that I would indeed use the forum. (And for comments to specific strings I guess indeed tagging with @ is the best way, as you said.)

1 Like

The non-threaded messaging system in TX is broken, the comments are broken, locking strings is counterproductive, aaaaaaaand:

Regardless of Transifex quality / efficiency in my opinion locking string is useful when a string has been validated / approved. It keeps a new translator from updating it to do a literal translation when maybe it has been done in a way to keep coherence with syntax used in other screens, or available space in screen where it’s shown or any other reason.

To promote Weblate or any other translation system. It would work better to tell how other systems manage Transifex shortcoming for translators or developers. Bashing Transifex isn’t quite convincing. :wink:
I’m sure if there are big plus and if moving to a new system is not too difficult it will be considered.
Up to now the only argument I read was because nb_No translation was not good => imho it would be the same no matter which translation platform is used, what is lacking is / are committed translator(s) :disappointed:

2 Likes

My two cents here. I would like to suggest that the “Translation” box on “Colaborate” section of main site points to a fixed post on “Translations” category here in this forum. This post would explain how to proceed with translations. For example, with language topics with people organizing their work there.

In the actual flow, when we want to contribute, we are redirected to Transifex. There, if any of the team coordinators aren’t active anymore, the strings aren’t reviewed. And someone (in this case, @keunes ) needs to monitor all teams (and Transifex messages) to see if they’re working. If we transfer the organization to here, we would have more eyes on it (and I’m already offering to help with Brazilian Portuguese translations). :slightly_smiling_face: What do you think? (oh, and, since I’m talking about message on Transifex, @keunes please take a look on the one I sent you there). :wink:

About Weblate, I do like it too, particularly some of it’s tools: easily view of other language translations; “neighbors” strings (good to available context in some cases) and a lot of sorting options. But I’m speaking as a translator. Don’t know if developer’s tools/integration are worst.

2 Likes

I think Transifex actively keeps people without accounts from even seeing strings, and that it is broken for translators, language coordinators, managers, project maintainers, and developers.

@Matth78 You can either look up “kingu” on Transifex to see how many contributions and projects are listed, or I will gladly tell you exactly how it fails for any of the topics you are interested in.
Both options are waste of time, so here goes:

Locking strings means people finding errors can’t improve them, which is many orders of magnitude more prevalent than malice. You are then banking on either the broken non-threaded Transifex messaging system, or the hidden commenting system.
You will not get all the best translators into the reviewer role, and even if you did they are not infallible.
With Transifex you can only stay atop everything as it happens by e-mail, or see quality erode.
You can’t know if suggestions are actually deleted entries, or ones found in the translation, so every time you want to go over something it turns into a whole lot of checking, mostly in vain.
There is no language-wide, or project search. If you don’t put up with all that, you aren’t arriving at any level of consistency. The only features reminiscent of search and overview are well hidden.

It is of course way worse than that, but you can try to argue differently from that premise.

That means new translators don’t learn, which even more-so solidifies Transifex as the home of the drive-by translator. The biggest projects either have very talented and extremely diligent people, or quality suffers. The Tor project in particular is famously bad. If you want “participation” but not string-changes, you have the worst of the worst.
You can’t solve the issue with roles or subsystems, because it doesn’t scale.

For every guy like klint telling you no difference could be made, you shed a whole lot of possibly good translators by default, and they won’t say anything about it.

Just for the record, this is now tracked here: Add Contribution page for Translate · Issue #102 · AntennaPod/antennapod.github.io · GitHub :slight_smile:

1 Like

Im intressted in translating to swedish :slight_smile: , i have a hobby buisness atm but looking to go proffesional with translating.

What carrot do i get if i translate it? I see the need for it, its the best podcast app i know, I get maybe money is not an option since its free open source but just to translate it and have no subscribtion email to or something to get that news out to the world would feel dissatisfieing if my efforts elsewhere is more valuble right now :slight_smile:

Hi @Observeramera
Thanks for chipping in :slight_smile: At the moment we don’t have any carrot - and I don’t think we will. We have been thinking about how to thank contributors to the project more generally (considering code, support, translations, communications and other contributions). But that would need further brainstorming and then execution by someone as well, so, yeah…

AntennaPod doesn’t have a mailing list (and we won’t 'cause it’s data collection and a good newsletter is also a lot of work). But we do have a blog and social media - once the first languages are ‘released’ on the live website, we maybe will announce it there.

This is something only you can decide! It’s subjective and very dependent on all the other projects you migth contribute to :wink:

This topic was automatically closed 60 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.