How to use Localization Manager for translating the ALIVE Platform

Localization Manager is based on a tool called Weblate, through which you can easily translate parts of web information systems. The strings are translated using user friendly interface, you can work alone or in teams. Localization Manager can even help you with translating, because it can create semi automatic translations, using capabilities of built-in Google Translator. The following short tutorial tries to help you to find the most direct way to your translations of the ALIVE Platform. Weblate is a mighty tool and this short course can’t cover all its functionalities. To find out more information about Weblate, as well as detailed documentation, please visit https://weblate.org/en/.

WHEN WILL I SEE MY TRANSLATIONS IN LIVE ENVIRONMENT?

Please mind that the Localization Manager doesn’t work „on the fly“, so you won’t see your translations immediately within the ALIVE Platform. The translated strings are displayed in live environment after they are committed by us. However, in case you have done all your translations and you really need to see them “live”, please contact us through our Service Desk (support@aliveplatform.com) and we can put the strings into your test environment, where you can check them.

LOGIN

To log in, visit https://localize.aliveplatform.com and insert credentials you received from GTS. If you don’t have these credentials, please contact us through our Service Desk (support@aliveplatform.com).

Open

You can of course change your password to a new password that is for you easier to remember. This can be done in your Profile -> Settings (see the picture below), in the „Account“ section.

Open

DASHBOARD

After you are successfully logged in, you will be redirected to your Dashboard, to section called „Your languages“. In this list, you see all modules of the ALIVE Platform and all languages that you can translate. You see the percentage of tranalsted strings and other statistics, you can of course use every column as a filter. The green part of the line for each module identifies correctly translated strings, the orange part identifies strings which require your attention (see later in this course).

HOW TO TRANSLATE

Start translating Choose the module of the ALIVE Platform that you want to translate and click the „Translate“ button in the right column

You will get to the graphical user interface, where you can translate the strings.

First of all, use the filtering menu (1), where you can choose what kind of strings you want to translate. In the default settings, the system offers you to translate „Strings needing action“, which are strings that are not translated or that may contain some error in translation (see later). In the first line (2), you see the string in source language (which by default is English). Into the bottom line (3), you can write your tranaslation. For some special symbols, you can use the predefined buttons that are located right above the line (4). This group of symbols can be customized (see later). After you are satistfied with your translation, just click the „Save“ button (5) and your translated version of the string will be saved and you can continue to next string using „Next button“ (6). States of translated strings As you can see, your strings below the „Translate“ window are in different states. These states are marked with small icons on right side of the string.

OK – Message is translated. The string is translated and there seems to be no problem with it.

Cross – Message is not translated.

Exclamation mark – Message has failing checks. The string is translated, however, there may be a problem. When the string is marked with exclamation mark, it doesn’t necessarily mean that it is not translated correctly. It can mean that in source language, there for example was a placeholder, which isn’t in your translation, or that the texts of the source and translated strings are exactly the same.

PLACEHOLDERS

Strings in programs sometimes need to have data inserted into them before being displayed to the user. Data placeholders label the places in the string where the data will go. Strings can also have markup like HTML included. It’s very important to preserve the placeholders and markup so the application will work properly. Placeholders come in a few different forms. Often, they are named so that data will be placed into the proper placeholder. Please familiarize yourself with all the different forms to make your translation successful. In the strings, the placeholders are marked as follows:

%cardType%

{{cardType}}

For example:

Show off your new %cardType% card!

As a rule, placeholders shouldn’t be translated into any language and they should be used exactly as they are. For example, in Spanish, the above string will look like:

¡Muestra tu carné %cardType%!

Rules for working with placeholders

1 ) Do not translate placeholders (for example, changing {{day}}to{{día}}). Strings inside placeholder will be replaced with different strings while the code is executing. Changing the content of the placeholder will cause the code to break. The placeholder string inside of the braces will give you clues as to what type of data will be presented in the final string. For example, %student_name% will be replaced with the name of a student, whereas %contact_email% will be replaced with an email address that users can use to contact us. This will give you some context when you are translating sentences with placeholders. You may rearrange the order of these strings, depending on the requirements of your language.

2) Do not alter punctuation, capitalization or spacing of placeholders (for example, changing %day% to %Day%). Altering the strings includes: changing, removing, or adding punctuation, changing the capitalization, or adding or removing given spacing. So if the placeholder string looks like %placeholder_string%, you should not change it at all, eg %Placeholder_String%, %placeholder-string%, % placeholder_string %, %placeholder string%. All of these changes have the potential to break the software. Working with HTML Some translation strings might contain HTML markup tags. It is very important to understand how to deal with HTML markup. Do not alter or translate any HTML markup tags. You should translate the text that is between tags. HTML markup tags begin and end with < and > characters. Spacing is especially important. Adding spaces in an HTML tag (eg changing </a> to </ a>) will break the application. For example:

<h3>Show off your new %cardType% card! </h3>

Should be translated as follows:

<h3>¡Muestra tu carné %cardType%!</h3>

USEFUL TIPS

Comments You can add your comment to each string, so you can give some information to your colleagues when you are working in teams. You can for example add comments such as „this string doesn’t need to be translated“, in case you are sure that the particular string is not at all displayed in your customization of the ALIVE Platform. Using @+username, you can also send email notification to your colleague.

Machine translation Localization Manager can help with your translations using built-in machine translations based on Google Translate service. Machine translation shows you the quality estimate of the translation. When you want to use the machine translated string, just click „Copy and save“ button. You can also rely on „Weblate Translation memory“, which in fact offers you translation of the same or very similar string, that has already been translated in the history.

Other languages When you are not sure how to translate the string, you can have a look into „Other languages“ section and see how translators from other markets have done their job. This can be helpful in case you are not sure about exact meaning or about context of a string. However, this can also be misleading, because some markets have their translations made to fit their specific needs!

„Zen“ mode You can switch into so called Zen mode, where you see all strings one after another. It is just another way how to display the strings and it can be better when you need to translate all strings, one by one. For switching back again, you can use the „Exit Zen“ button.

Special characters As was already mentioned in previous sections, there is a list of special characters integrated into the main Translate window. You can insert these special characters into your strings just by clicking on them, so there is no need to search for them on your keyboard. Some characters have already been predefined for you. However, you can enrich this predefined list by adding your own characters. To add new characters, go to your Profile -> Settings -> Preferences -> Special characters window. Into this window, insert the characters without adding any delimeter between them. Don’t forget to save your new settings