The worst thing about doing localization is the absence of context. It is the main reason for bad translations in localization projects. English as the source language is particularly bad as English, as a non-inflecting language, is extra ambiguous in absence of context. In inflecting languages you really need to know whether a word is a noun or a verb to translate correctly.

It may be too hard to provide appropriate context in a database setup as here. Failing that, the next best thing would be to have access on the translator page to translations proposed in other languages. Many translators are multilingual enough to get grammatical clues from translations in other languages (revised ones, of course).

Comments

Pasqualle’s picture

Pasqualle
Location 🇭🇺 Budapest
CreditAttribution: Pasqualle commented
Title: Allow translator to see context, failing that, translations in other languages » see translations in other languages
Project: Drupal.org site moderators » Localization server
Version: » 6.x-2.x-dev
Component: Other » Code

It is possible to add context to the string in Drupal 7 (see http://api.drupal.org/api/function/t/7 $options parameter), and it is possible to filter by context on the localize.drupal.org translation server.

the other feature request moved to the l10n_server project's issue queue.

droplet’s picture

droplet CreditAttribution: droplet commented

same issue ?
#619376: Support multiple translations of the same strings

Gábor Hojtsy’s picture

Gábor Hojtsy
he/him
Primary language Hungarian
Location Hungary
CreditAttribution: Gábor Hojtsy commented

No, these are totally different. Let's suppose you manage the Czech translation, looking at the Slovak translation can be useful additionally to looking at the English one, since Czech and Slovak are similar. This issue is about this scenario.

droplet’s picture

droplet CreditAttribution: droplet commented

oh my god, that's really cool idea.
so if someone don't know english, they can do translation base on other language their understand.

Gábor Hojtsy’s picture

Gábor Hojtsy
he/him
Primary language Hungarian
Location Hungary
CreditAttribution: Gábor Hojtsy commented

Well, ideally they would not translate based on the other language, but would use that as a side help. Translations can already be misleading. Translating based on a translation can be a disaster.

SebCorbin’s picture

SebCorbin CreditAttribution: SebCorbin at Makina Corpus commented
Version: 6.x-2.x-dev » 7.x-1.x-dev
Issue summary: View changes

Bumping to 7.x, but we need to think about it in terms of UI, and also only query the approved suggestions in other languages.