Mission Planner Parameters List Chinese Translation Project is working now

[Stone Bai]

Hello everybody, It's my first time talking to you guys. Maybe it's the first time you see me. I try yo introduce myself first.
I'm a super book fans of Chris Anderson from China. I read his book form very long time ago. In the end of 2012, the book Makers was published in China.  I bought one at just that time. The world of makers that he described is totally attracted me. I like to make these interesting stuff when I was a kid. So, first I learn to use Arduino. And Multiwii, because a flying machine is so cool. At that time, I've translated the config.h of MultiWii 2.2. But the flying was so terrible. I could't control it  when it's off the ground. Because I did not mount the GPS on that, and didn't open the stabilize.
This maybe a good thing, then I just hear a powerful autopilot named "APM", When I search on it, I remembered this is the project  that Chris wrote on Makers. And he is the founder. I think I found the direction of life at that time.   This is the mid of 2013, I discovered Hazy that chinese translater on Google code did not update the wiki translation for one year, and the wiki was also moved to website. So, I just built a website same as ardupilot.com, it's ardupilot.cn. I put on my wiki page translation on it, and it's attracted 23 translaters and 2000 users in our social group now. A few days ago, one C# developer found me, tell me he want to make Mission Planner have full chinese translation. We just working on it. But when we do more, we think try to communicate to official team is better.

What we wanna do:
1. move lot of strings to .resx
Some strings is dangerous, but we‘ve try our best to make it ok. we think we’ve made it. And go on.

2. translate the Parameters List
    2.1 At first we've make MP can load ParameterMetaData.zh-Hans.xml in chinese language environment, and can load new params that if chinese xml didn't  exist.

these were pull requests to the github code.
And more:
    2.2 we think translate Parameters.pde in firmware to our language is better than xml
          we will pull the translation files named “Parameters.zh-CN.pde”, but the convert to xml tool seems do not support utf-8

If it was possible:
3. build a chinese firmware mirror server
In china update MP and firmware is very slow and always timeout. We have one Windows server and one Centos linux server ready, but don't know what is the best way to sync and achieve it.

The Future....
We have a great team yet, we can follow the params update and write a little bit code now. And we glad to see other language can follow our step to localize this.
In the near future, APM is more easy to use in china, then more and more pilots and developers form china will  join into APM family, we will contribute more code to APM to make this project better.

[Kevin Hester]

I think moving MP strings to resx is a great idea and then adding a chinese translation is even better.  I bet the best person to talk with you about this is the main MP designer/developer Michael Oborne.  I'm attaching his email in case he misses this thread.

Kevin

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[Stone Bai]

Thank you for that, LOL

在 2014年11月27日星期四UTC+8上午7时23分48秒，kevinh写道：

[Stone Bai]

Maybe I used the wrong word in title, I mean it's in progress

在 2014年11月27日星期四UTC+8上午4时09分03秒，Stone Bai写道：

[Craig Elder]

You'll find Michael is reading this message right here but please understand sometimes a person's normal life will prevent them from responding right away.

On Nov 29, 2014 10:42 AM, "SkiTiSu" <sjt...@gmail.com> wrote:

HI, everyone. I'm the C# developer who has been mentioned above.

A month ago, I translated the rest of the resx files which .net can automatically generates. But this is not enough. There're still many English words in the software, especially the parameters list. In our 'ardupilot.cn' QQ group and some model plane forums in China, a lot of people ask some same questions such as 'What does bad GPS pos mean', 'Which param is for logging logs' from time to time. So I tried to replace some strings to resx, that can also make them support multilanguage. And add some codes that can support 'ParameterMetaData.zh-Hans.xml'.

Five days ago, we pulled the request #724 in MP's Github. But M.O. did nothing to it. I'm still replacing other strings to resx and translate them. We are not sure this method is the best way to translate them. We hope that the work we do can make APM more widely used, so there will be more people to test it or feedback codes.

We don't know how to contact M.O., so we send the post here. We are looking forward to the official reply. This determines what we will do next.

Sincerely,

SkiTiSu (Jackie Ji)

[SkiTiSu]

I'm sorry that some words in Chinese is very common but seems too rude in English. I didn't really mean it. I will pay attention to my words. It's very joyful for contributing to APM. Thank you for you guys. XD

Jackie