[freeciv-i18n] Re: how to make www.freeciv.org translatable

[Christian Knoke <chrisk@xxxxxxxx>]

On Sun, Oct 13, 2002 at 03:38:59PM +0200, Reinier Post wrote:
> 
> This is a request for discussion on the translation of www.freeciv.org.
> 
[...]
> What follows is a - hopefully complete- overview of the existing support
> for translation of www.freeciv.org.

Thank you - maybe you can put this into web_html CVS?

I jump to the one point which strikes me right now:

>   - adopt gettext: maintain a list of translatable strings that occur within
>     the files on the site, and ask translators to translate this list

I wonder whether this is a way to go. It surely has a disadvantage:
Every translation needs to be as complete as possible. The user
will see english text all the time if it is not.

On the other hand I think a (nearly) complete translation would be good to 
have.

The plusses are many:

- We can translate paragraph by paragraph or item by item. If some
  information changes, we'll see the FUZZY mark. Right now it's hard
  to see when things get obsolete.

- No need to hassle with html or php.

- The user will not miss any information due to a incomplete translation.

- The user will not miss any information due to a obsolete translation
  (because the fuzzy things will be replaced by the engllish text auto-
  matically).

- The user won't have to decide whether read the english or german pages.
  She will always go to the german (french ...) pages.

What I'm not sure with is how easy/hard it will be to translate those
po files. It would be a must that paragraphs which belong together (because
they are on the same page) are subsequent in the po file(s).

Christian

-- 
Christian Knoke     * * *      http://www.enter.de/~c.knoke/
* * * * * * * * *  Ceterum censeo Microsoft esse dividendum.