5.1 Notes for translators

IMPORTANT: Due to a GitBook rendering issue, all percent signs in the example code below are being replaced with ampersands. Be sure to reintroduce the percent signs when writing your own code!!

• You will be issued a text file (with extension .mo) containing the strings to be translated into your target language. An entry from this document might look something like this:

#: core/templates/core/about.html:28

msgid "Rural India: a living journal, a breathing archive"

msgstr ""

Any lines preceded by # can usually be ignored by the translator. There are two exceptions to this:

1. If the line begins with # Translators: These comments are specifically written for you by our developers to clarify some aspect of the translation.
2. If you see the line #, fuzzy: This is an indication that there may have been conflicting translations in a previous version of this file. Confirm or correct the translation you see to the best of your ability and, when satisfied, delete the #, fuzzy tag (since it might prevent your translation from being rendered).

The msgid entry provides the string to be translated. The corresponding human-translated string should be inserted between the double quotes after msgstr, as follows:

msgstr "Ländlichen Indien: eine lebendige Zeitschrift, ein atmendes Archiv"

• A multi-line block of text will look like this:

#: core/templates/core/about.html:38

msgid "Can a project's success be judged on the basis of its never being completed? "

"Yes, if it's a living archive of the world's most complex countryside. Rural "

"India is in many ways the most diverse part of the planet. Its 833 million "

"people include distinct societies speaking well over 700 languages, some of "

"them thousands of years old. "

msgstr ""

The human translation provided can also extend across multiple lines, with each line enclosed between double quotes. The line breaks do not have to correspond with those shown in the original language. The translator should take care, however, to include a whitespace character at the end of each line as shown below, because the individual lines will be concatenated into the final translated string. The exception to this rule is when an html tag extends across two lines (see bullet point 3 below).

msgstr "Kann der Erfolg eines Projekts anhand seiner Unvollständigkeit beurteilt sein? "

"Ja, wenn es ein lebendiges Archiv der aufwändigsten Landschaft der Welt ist. Ländlichen "

"Indien ist auf viele Arten der unterschiedlichste Teil des Planets. Seine 833 Millionen "

"Leute einschließen einzelne Gesellschaften, die über 700 Sprachen sprechen können. "

• If there are html tags contained within the text to be translated, reproduce them faithfully (and as mentioned above, if these tags extend across a line boundary, do not add extra whitespace at the end of the line). Any django template tags (parameters enclosed within &(...)s) should be included verbatim at the syntactically appropriate points in the translation; these will be translated into human-readable text at run-time. For example:

#: core/templates/core/contribute.html:135

msgid "Is your content ready to upload? Do go through the <a href="

"&(guidelines)s\>PARI content guidelines</a> to ensure you know what's "

"required."

msgstr "Ist Ihre Inhalt bereit zu hochladen? Besehen Sie sich die <a href="

"&(guidelines)s\>PARI-Inhaltsrichtlinien</a>, so dass Sie wissen was "

"erforderlich ist."

Essentially, our localisation protocol will take your provided translation and copy it wholesale into the original html code, completely overwriting the existing text; thus, any html formatting tags or django template tags need to be reproduced in the translation.

• Your translation should be case-sensitive; that is, to the extent possible, please respect the capitalisation conventions of the original string (unless the target language has its own rules on such matters). Punctuation and other formatting decisions should also be upheld.