Forum language localizations

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magpie
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Re: Forum language localizations

Post by magpie »

tabbs wrote:That multilingual interface works fine, and quite a few people may never or hardly ever visit the eurobilltrackerforum.com site. Those who do will of course notice English first.
That's not quite right. The user interface's language seems to be chosen according to the web browser's language settings. Here in my office the board language was German right after the installation of the language package...
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Re: Forum language localizations

Post by Dakkus »

tabbs wrote:Just switched from "British English" to German ("Deutsch/Du") to try that out, and the result is a pretty odd mix. The interface elements now are in German (guess that is what phpBB provides), but the descriptions for those forums that are not language specific are in English (see Announcements, Feedback, Int'l Meetings, Statistics, Notes and Coins, etc.). Guess I'll change my prefs back to English, though what I speak is American or Germerican rather than British, hehe.

Sure, German may be the language that is the mother tongue of most people in Euroland and the European Union. (Außerdem ist Deutsch kinderleicht - ich jedenfalls spreche es seit dem Kleinkind-Alter. :mrgreen: ) But let's be honest; English is by far the most important bridge language in both the EU as a whole and in the currency union. If I am in a country where I don't speak the "local" language, German would in general not be the language I would pick to communicate with the "locals". And I am pretty darn sure I'm not the only one who does that.

Now if somebody is new to EBT and goes to the eurobilltracker.eu website, s/he can easily choose from a variety of languages. That multilingual interface works fine, and quite a few people may never or hardly ever visit the eurobilltrackerforum.com site. Those who do will of course notice English first. So what? After a few seconds, they will notice a forum in the language they speak best.

The only improvement which IMO would make sense: Put the forum language options in a row somewhere at the top. This way somebody who is not a member yet can still click on, say, "nl" and get the Dutch version. Would that be (technically) possible without requiring a visitor to sign on first?

Christian
The forum descriptions are naturally in the language that you're supposed to use when talking in that forum. Why would somebody need a Portuguese description for an English-language forum?
For people who have no knowledge of English at all using the forum of changing its settings is very difficult. Also the four buttons under the post writing form might be difficult to recognize if you don't know the language.
The translations are needed to enable for example the French people to register on the forum and conversate in their own part of the forum even if they speak no English.
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Re: Forum language localizations

Post by De-Ker »

Just switched to Dutch..

I think it's good to have as much languages available as possible. it Is always the been the strong part of the site. And it's good to get the forum in as much languages as possible. The people who don't understand English don't have to use the English topics anyway so no harm if the global announcements and stuff stay in English. If they are really important they are placed on the site itself and can be translated.
I always thought there is a relation between the amount of English speakers in a country and the amount users on the forums.
You hardly see any southern europe users here on the forums (the international forums that is) Especially if you compare it with North-Europe users. Of course this is also because of the amount of users in general but i think it's also because of the "step" to an english based forum because lot's of south-euro's don't speak english (that good)
Making the step to this forum a little smaller by adding their mother tongue is only a good thing.


But,

If this is the official Dutch version PHP offers they seriously need to kick the translator good. Because it's just plain crap. I'm sorry to say it rude but it's full of slang and wrong sentence constructions. A few post above me you can read that I did a translation once for Limburgish (a Dutch/Belgian/German Dialect) and i know it's sometimes tricky with the placement of words but still doable when you pay attention and when you know your language...
When I just read the page (reaction page) I see a sentence like "Geef je bericht hier, het mag niet meer bevatten dan 600000 tekens." and a button with the non existing word "bevestig" (should be bevestigen in every case) i almost start to cry. I switch back to English..

I know you guys can't help this but i just want to say it.
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Re: Forum language localizations

Post by Dakkus »

De-Ker wrote:Just switched to Dutch..

I think it's good to have as much languages available as possible. it Is always the been the strong part of the site. And it's good to get the forum in as much languages as possible. The people who don't understand English don't have to use the English topics anyway so no harm if the global announcements and stuff stay in English. If they are really important they are placed on the site itself and can be translated.
I always thought there is a relation between the amount of English speakers in a country and the amount users on the forums.
You hardly see any southern europe users here on the forums (the international forums that is) Especially if you compare it with North-Europe users. Of course this is also because of the amount of users in general but i think it's also because of the "step" to an english based forum because lot's of south-euro's don't speak english (that good)
Making the step to this forum a little smaller by adding their mother tongue is only a good thing.


But,

If this is the official Dutch version PHP offers they seriously need to kick the translator good. Because it's just plain crap. I'm sorry to say it rude but it's full of slang and wrong sentence constructions. A few post above me you can read that I did a translation once for Limburgish (a Dutch/Belgian/German Dialect) and i know it's sometimes tricky with the placement of words but still doable when you pay attention and when you know your language...
When I just read the page (reaction page) I see a sentence like "Geef je bericht hier, het mag niet meer bevatten dan 600000 tekens." and a button with the non existing word "bevestig" (should be bevestigen in every case) i almost start to cry. I switch back to English..

I know you guys can't help this but i just want to say it.
Somewhat related to this.. I find it annoying how Finnish (language) is always listed with a capital letter.
"Suomi" means "Finland".
"suomi" means "Finnish (language)".

Of course in the beginning of the sentence the S should always be capital.
But the text "Keskustelua tästä sivustosta ja eurojen seuraamisesta (Suomi)" annoys, because it means "Conversation about this site and following euros (Finland)", while all the other languages say the language name instead of the country name. ("Español", "Deutsch", etc.).
Also the language list in the forum settings page is listing Finnish as "Finland" instead of "Finnish".

I would want to stress, though, that this is not a feature request. I indeed do find this thing annoying, because I indeed do like nitpicking about languages. I don't really think I have a "right" to be annoyed about this and it's completely okay if nothing happens about it. Just like I don't like grey cars but I still don't go shouting to their owners that they should paint their cars ;)
I just felt like writing the above stuff because I thought someone might find it curious :)
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Re: Forum language localizations

Post by lmviterbo »

De-Ker wrote:You hardly see any southern europe users here on the forums (the international forums that is) Especially if you compare it with North-Europe users. Of course this is also because of the amount of users in general but i think it's also because of the "step" to an english based forum because lot's of south-euro's don't speak english (that good)
Small correction: You can see a lot of Portuguese on the International forum, although the average quality of their English may be not that good. But we Portuguese watch American and English and all other movies on both TV and cinema subtitled, not dubbed like in Italy or Spain, and probably that stands us in good stead.
De-Ker wrote:If this is the official Dutch version PHP offers they seriously need to kick the translator good. Because it's just plain crap. I'm sorry to say it rude but it's full of slang and wrong sentence constructions. [...] I switch back to English..
The same happens with the Portuguese translation, just maybe not that bad. But I switched back to English too...
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Re: Forum language localizations

Post by De-Ker »

lmviterbo wrote:
De-Ker wrote:You hardly see any southern europe users here on the forums (the international forums that is) Especially if you compare it with North-Europe users. Of course this is also because of the amount of users in general but i think it's also because of the "step" to an english based forum because lot's of south-euro's don't speak english (that good)
Small correction: You can see a lot of Portuguese on the International forum, although the average quality of their English may be not that good. But we Portuguese watch American and English and all other movies on both TV and cinema subtitled, not dubbed like in Italy or Spain, and probably that stands us in good stead.
I wanted to add the Portuguese exception... But I couldn't be arsed to be honest... you are right tho.. Portugal is a (nice) exception!
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Re: Forum language localizations

Post by j3paris »

I don't think anyone has mentioned the French "translation" yet...

I can't tell you much about it because I immediately set my default to English after seeing a massive mistake in the French version as soon as you open the forum.

For the record, before the dates (of most recent posts, and also on the now-visible topic creation dates under topic names), the English "on" has been literally translated into French as "sur"... which is absolute nonsense en français...

Severe evidence of machine translation... :roll:
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Re: Forum language localizations

Post by tabbs »

magpie wrote:The user interface's language seems to be chosen according to the web browser's language settings.
Just fiddled with some settings, tried a different computer, and yes, seems you're right. Sorry about that.

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Re: Forum language localizations

Post by doiknow »

I guess there are language files like in phpbb2. Can't they be changed to correct the mistakes reported here? This should not be a big problem as we seem to have masses of translators here.
It seems as some languages have been translated by some kind of machine.
'sur francais' is a nice example.
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Re: Forum language localizations

Post by Crazy Bob »

De-Ker wrote:Just switched to Dutch..

I think it's good to have as much languages available as possible. it Is always the been the strong part of the site. And it's good to get the forum in as much languages as possible. The people who don't understand English don't have to use the English topics anyway so no harm if the global announcements and stuff stay in English. If they are really important they are placed on the site itself and can be translated.
I always thought there is a relation between the amount of English speakers in a country and the amount users on the forums.
You hardly see any southern europe users here on the forums (the international forums that is) Especially if you compare it with North-Europe users. Of course this is also because of the amount of users in general but i think it's also because of the "step" to an english based forum because lot's of south-euro's don't speak english (that good)
Making the step to this forum a little smaller by adding their mother tongue is only a good thing.


But,

If this is the official Dutch version PHP offers they seriously need to kick the translator good. Because it's just plain crap. I'm sorry to say it rude but it's full of slang and wrong sentence constructions. A few post above me you can read that I did a translation once for Limburgish (a Dutch/Belgian/German Dialect) and i know it's sometimes tricky with the placement of words but still doable when you pay attention and when you know your language...
When I just read the page (reaction page) I see a sentence like "Geef je bericht hier, het mag niet meer bevatten dan 600000 tekens." and a button with the non existing word "bevestig" (should be bevestigen in every case) i almost start to cry. I switch back to English..

I know you guys can't help this but i just want to say it.
This point still stands; the Dutch language version of phpBB is, quality-wise, still pretty awful.

Things like "Informeer me als de melding behandelt wordt" or "De bericht is succesvol afgekeurd" should make any speaker of the Dutch language cry.
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Re: Forum language localizations

Post by avij »

We're now running phpBB 3.0.8, and while updating to that version I also updated the various language packs. If there are still problems with the phpBB translations, please direct your complaints to the appropriate contact persons. If you do send a suggestion to them, I'd suggest downloading the language pack in question and proofreading the entire language pack while you're at it. This way you'd help all the phpBB installations out there, not just us.

Although Slovenian is one of the languages that can be selected here on the forum, it looks like there is no Slovenian language pack for the current version of phpBB. So if you're using Slovenian here on the forum, some of the texts may be shown in English until a new Slovenian language pack is released by the phpBB group and subsequently installed on EBTF.
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Re: Forum language localizations

Post by aloxe »

Héyo, there, I know this is not the place but I didn't find where I could propose to help with translation of the locations in EBT. I just switched to the interface in French and there are many big cities that are not translated. Is there a file somewhere with all endonyms that I could edit and send back to one of the maintainer of EBT?
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Re: Forum language localizations

Post by avij »

aloxe wrote:Héyo, there, I know this is not the place but I didn't find where I could propose to help with translation of the locations in EBT. I just switched to the interface in French and there are many big cities that are not translated. Is there a file somewhere with all endonyms that I could edit and send back to one of the maintainer of EBT?
Yes, this is indeed the wrong subforum, this subforum is for forum related things only.

But to answer your question, only a dozen city names or so have a translation. See this old message. By making a city name available for translation, it'd mean that the city name would need to be translated to ALL EBT languages, which is generally speaking not worth the effort. So we'll stick to the current city names for now, until some more flexible method is available.
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Re: FORUM FOR ENGLISH SPEAKING VISITORS

Post by 1971o »

LITO wrote::idea: I suggest there should be a forum for English speaking visitors in each langage discution site , just like Slovenian and Maltese end French discution sites do . This particular forum would have to remain sticky .
:arrow: It would be a nice way for many of us to visit and ask questions all over the forums to our mates who do not speak same languages but speak English too (more less) . :flag-eu: :D
I would like a lot if the english-speaking topics & not-local-language-topics were linked together somewhere, to easily see if there are new messages :D .
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