Contributing translations to the OpenKinect wiki is now possible!

[bp84]

Hi!

It's been about 3 months since the OpenKinect project began and over
time the question arose of whether and how it was possible to
contribute translations to the project. Some people may feel less
comfortable with the English language or simply may want to follow for
instance an installation procedure in their own language if it's
available...

Well insofar as the wiki is concerned, the answer is "yes" and the
feature has been implemented. Contributors now have the opportunity to
reach and help out fellow speakers in their own native language
directly on the OpenKinect wiki. Take a look at these 2 pages
translated to French which I hope will be the first of many more to
come in as many languages as you all speak :

- http://openkinect.org/wiki/Main_Page/fr
- http://openkinect.org/wiki/Getting_Started_Windows/fr

Here you will find the relevant Language Policy for the Wiki:

- http://openkinect.org/wiki/Policies#Language_Policy_on_the_OpenKinect_Wiki

And the simple steps to create such translated pages are outlined in
the FAQ here:

- http://openkinect.org/wiki/FAQ#Can_I_help_translate_a_specific_page_on_the_OpenKinect_Wiki_to_my_language.3F

I have no doubt this simple yet enabling feature will be quite useful
and interesting!

Special thanks to Joshua B. and all the people who helped with the
technical side of things and contents etc. - Drew, Kyle and other irc
channel members @OpenKinect!

And thank you for your time!

BankP

[vinot]

is it allowed to use google translate to do a draft?

toni

[bp84]

Hi!

I guess in the process of translating a page you could use it. In fact
I tried it to translate the Getting_Started_Windows from English to
French. Honestly the results were so bad I couldn't even start with
that because it was unreadable - so I did it from scratch... I think
Google Translate has greatly improved over the years and it's amazing
to translate emails and news and plain stuff but with technical stuff
like an install procedure it fails miserably, at least in my recent
experience! So I guess it depends on the content.

Personally I find starting with a copy of the English source page (not
just the text, but all the source from when you do 'edit' on a wiki
page) and going through it a paragraph at a time in notepad then
pasting the translation to a new page is better but that's my method -
and it makes sure you keep all the formatting and tags intact etc.
because of course, a page is more than just the text in it.

But if that's what you want, I think maybe if you decide to translate
a page according the the Policy and using the steps I outlined, you
could use Google translate to make a draft and work on it without
adding the language tag on the English page so your page remains
somewhat "hidden" and when you think it's acceptable then you could
add the tag so that people coming to the English page can look at your
translation. I prefer to do the translation entirely outside the wiki
framework but as I said that's me.

Thank you for the question and good luck!

bankP

[bp84]

Hi again!

I wanted to add that for people who want to contribute to the wiki in
whatever way, it's quite useful to look at this and other pages of the
MediaWiki for some help on formatting etc... :

http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Formatting

Thank you!

bankP

[vinot]

fine,

I should use google only for draft, but even this is a lot of work
done!

doing it offline better than directly on site, sure...

thanks,

toni

[vinot]

what the hell... what's the easiest way to do it?

I translated main_page to spanish, but no way to cut+paste with
gedit...

any idea? with ubuntu please, otherwise I could email translated text
to someone more skilled!

toni

[bp84]

Hi!

I'm very much surprised by this cut and paste issue you have.

If you can't find a way, send it to me and I'll put in on the wiki for
you....

bank....@gmail.com

Thank you very much for your contribution!

[vinot]

Hi all,

finally I'm starting to add translation (spanish). I marked it as
"minor edit" as there are some errors (mainly, I'm not a
translator...)

I don't have too much time, so I will do it in parts

Por favor, comprovad los errores, que hay un montón de palabras que no
sé cómo traducirlas (gramática aparte :(

Ya he visto la estructura, próximas entregas serán más completas...

thanks,

toni

[bp84]

Hi!

The wiki's main page and Getting Started doc are fully translated to
French as I had already explained some weeks ago...

Now the main page has also been translated in part to :

- http://openkinect.org/wiki/Main_Page/zh-hans - Simplified Chinese
- http://openkinect.org/wiki/Main_Page/es - Spanish

Contributions are welcome to either complete those, translate other
pages or start in another language!

Special thanks to Kaneabell and Toni for their translations!

Thank you!

bankP

[oppilif]

These days I'll try to translate the Main page in Italian - if I can
find some spare time!

oppilif

[Radamés Ajna]

Good job!
I'll start the translation do Portuguese Brazil!

Radamés

[Joshua Blake]

You guys are awesome.

[bp84]

Hi!

The Openkinect.org homepage has been translated to 5 languages!!!

-Chinese
-Spanish
-Portuguese (Brazil)
-Italian
-French

And I see more is in the works so this is amazing and I wanted to
thank the contributors : Oppilif, Radamés, Kaneabell, and Toni - for
their translation!!

Furthermore, here are a few thoughts on how to make maintenance easier
for everyone - and if you have any other idea or suggestion don't
hesitate:

- Once a page is created, if it contains sections in the =text=
format, an "edit" link will appear for each section to the right of
the page once you're logged in. Using this link edits only that
specific section and automatically prefaces the comment with the name
of the section which is useful for tracking changes. When possible
edit on a per section basis

- In the same spirit, please try to make focused individual changes to
sections etc instead of global scattered changes; so that you can
easily undo changes in a predictable way for instance and for tracking
purposes and for clarity

- Please use the comment line wisely to document the changes you make
by describing what you changed, removed and why etc.

- Use the history tab to track changes for a single page or the
"recent changes" page to keep track of what's happening on the wiki -
http://openkinect.org/wiki/Special:RecentChanges - there is also an
RSS feed link on that page

- Use the "minor change" checkmark to notify of unimportant or small
changes that are not important globally

- Don't forget to link your pages together - for instance the 2 links
to "Installation" on the French homepage points to the Getting_Started/
fr page - in French. Even if the language bar should be placed on top
of any English page for which there is a translation, there's no
reason why someone couldn't jump directly to the pages in his own
language if they exist

- When possible, use relative linking to pages using the [[page_name|
optional_text]] format rather than the absolute [http://openkinect.org/
page_name optional_text] format.

As development continues, it's also important for everyone to keep an
eye on the changes, especially to pages like the Getting Started page
(installation) so that we can maintain as much as possible the
information up to date in all the languages...

Thank you!

bankP

On Mar 2, 2:10 pm, Joshua Blake <joshbl...@gmail.com> wrote:
> You guys are awesome.
>

> On Wed, Mar 2, 2011 at 2:07 PM, Radamés Ajna <radama...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Good job!
> > I'll start the translation do Portuguese Brazil!
>
> > Radamés
>