Translation of the user guide #1834
Replies: 2 comments 28 replies
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Someone contributed a French translation of the docs a couple of years ago, but unfortunately keeping up with it is a huge task as it changes a fair bit between each release. Ideally, a translated documentation would be nice though. The translation tool novelWriter uses is limited by word count, and there is no way the documentation is anywhere near small enough, so I'm uncertain what would be the best approach. Publishing alternative PDF docs could be one option, but without a tool that checks what paragraphs need re-translating for each version, the task is pretty big. If you know of a suitable tool, I'm happy to look into it. I could set up a shadow repository where translated version of the documentation lives, and automatically build PDFs, so that part is definitely doable. |
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Please keep me posted about it. |
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Well, translating files directly will not be very usable. The framework for translations uses files like this as the source files, which are the ones that need to be translated:
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It's easy to generate the files, which I've already done. I've attached them here: gettext.zip They are probably easier to translate with a suitable tool if you can find one. I have never translated this type of files before, so not very familiar with them. |
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I will make some research during the weekend. One last question, if I don't find any tool for it, would it make it useful for you if I edit directly the .pot files with notepad, and then sending back to you a zipped folder with the translated files? |
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You need to generate the .po files for the relevant language. See point 4 here. I can easily do that for you as well, but it looks very clunky having to do all of this in notepad. There is a tool for it called poedit available that does all that directly from the .pot files. |
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Hi, I made a doc in French using sphinx, sphinx-intl, gettext, poedit and latex. You can find it here. https://github.com/Karduin/novelWriter-docs_fr In the You can download the folder and run index.html. In the https://github.com/Karduin/novelWriter-docs_fr/blob/main/docs/fr_build/latex/manual.pdf The .po files are in I'm not sure if the translation is optimal, but it does the job. |
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A challenge with the documentation is definitely to keep the text in it in sync with the same labels on the GUI. This is manually taken care of in the default English GUI and docs. But for French, like here for instance, these could easily diverge when there are different translators for the GUI and the docs, and both translate from the respective English sources. |
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Yes, so I worked with novelWriter open on the side. There are certainly a few things to correct, let's just say that as an amateur writer it's first draft. ;-) Maybe I'll make a kind of dictionary with nw_fr_FR.ts |
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This is a highly interesting topic, especially for software that is being developed rapidly but requires reliable documentation in order to use the features. Especially with free software, localizations are often hopelessly outdated. I have decided to only distribute the translations and docs I have created myself. My package builder aborts if the German translations are not complete. In the event that another translation is required, a maintainer is needed to take responsibility for it and the documentation. He can then offer a language package under his account that can be easily installed and is also upwardly compatible by simply leaving missing terms untranslated. I have marked the URL for the “Online help” menu entry for gettext so that it can refer directly to the translated help page in the context of a foreign language UI translation. Then I created a template repository for language packages on GitHub, which contains all the utilities to collect the *.pot files, generate the necessary binaries from the *.po files, assemble the whole thing into a self-installing package and link it to the localisation's landing page for download. The translated documentation should then be offered by this maintainer via a separate repository. At the moment I don't have a user base, especially as the use case for my program is quite specific, but I hope to be prepared for all possibilities in this way. |
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I have got a Python script for this. Its output looks like so: # GuiDocEditor
Add Word to Dictionary : Ajouter ce mot au dictionnaire
Copy : Copier
Could not save document. : Impossible d'enregistrer le document.
Create Note for Tag : Créer une note pour l'étiquette
Created: {0} : Créé : {0}
Cut : Couper
Do you want to create a new project note for the tag '{0}'? : Voulez-vous créer une nouvelle note de projet pour l'étiquette '{0}' ?
Document Details : Détails du document
File Location: {0} : Emplacement du fichier : {0}
Follow Tag : Suivre cette étiquette
No Suggestions : Pas de suggestion
Just uploaded it to the gists: In case you need the translations as a JSON file: |
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Hi @peter88213 Well, maybe that's a bit too much, but I had fun.
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Hi,
I'm a new user of novelWrite and already enthusiastically using it. Talked about it to a couple of people who are not speaking English and they remain kind of reluctant to skip from their usual commercial docx software to an open source text editor.
Is there anyone willing or planning to translate the user guide?
I can contribute to a French version.
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