Hey there,

let me know if you guys need any help with translations or other language issues (German too...)

I think it is a great idea to have Loomio in several languages and it would get me back into the "Loomio loop".

Dale pa´ lante...

Un saludo,

• D.

Si si, brilliant idea given the huge spanish speaking population. I have a Spanish friend who might be willing to help us with the userbility.

Wonderful! A nice thing about Rails is that translations are supported from the start. Doing the first translation is a bit harder than a subsequent one but it's still not that hard. It also does not hold up other features much.

I am really excited about this!! Thank you @noelia . I think we should use this process with Spanish to learn how to do translation/localization well so we can also do more languages in the future.

I think you should go for it and start working with Aaron/John on number 1, and a few of us should get together soon to discuss number 2 with you.

Yay! I got the job! ;)

Yeah, I think there's massive potential in the Spanish-speaking world.

It's a great idea. My group is based in Spain and while we get by perfectly well (the interface is so clean that it doesn't need any grand explanations on how to use it) it'd be great to have non-English speakers be able to grasp it straight away.

Thanks so much for kicking this off @noelia! Super exciting!

@noelia The Spanish Pirate Party joined loomio a few weeks ago and we wish to collaborate in a spanish translation of Loomio. Please keep us informed Noelia.

Hola aquí desde Madrid colaborando desde el partido equo,
! Un abrazo lo que quieran podemos ayudar!

Welcome @yago and @franciscogeorgeppes! Great to see new faces in here :)

Maybe @noelia could get in contact with the people who are interested in helping, and coordinate working together? Since she's located here in our office it will facilitate communication with the rest of the team.

Yes! I will be in touch if I need help once I finished step 1, thank you all for wonderful support! :) @franciscogeorgeppes @yago @Stacco @sophiejerram @dennislindner

I heard a pleasant rumour that our good friend @richardfortune has experience with software localisation!

Richard, any advice about early stage strategies for localisation would be super helpful!

Nice to see @yago from EQUO in the team!

Happy to talk through the principles although I'm probably out of touch with the tools available nowadays. I think we may have had another discussion on Yammer about this before. Tools that can localise on the fly.

Before you can even begin localising you need to do a globalisation phase - ensuring your product is localisable, separating out assets, handling timezones or any regional elements used in the UI.

Given you guys are an opensource project I'm betting you would prefer to crowd source the localisation, which means you'll need a way of getting those assets pushed back into app. I'd see what github has to offer with regards to localisation. Handling updates like you would code commits could be the nicest way to go. Also means you don't have to "take" all commits and aren't in a constant state of policing like Wikipedia is.

Would also be keen to get an idea of any "big data" plan you guys might want to support, as that raises a totally different issue outside of pure linguistics.

Thanks so much for kicking this off @noelia, super exciting.

We were talking yesterday about to achieve a really high-quality translation that captures the nuanced meanings of the key words in the app.

One suggestion was that we could create a full list of all the phrases in the app, and write down an explanation for the rationale behind each choice. Then we could translate the explanation as well as the key phrases, to make sure each translation is faithful copy.

Another thing we'll have to think about is how to handle support requests in the different languages. Perhaps there could be a Loomio group for each supported language, where people can get together and ask and answer each others' questions.

Indeed, thanks @noelia! I'm very excited about this. =) I love the initiative you've taken with the plan you've outlined above. I'm looking forward to working with you (and hopefully one of our tech interns) on this. We should arrange a time to chat!

@noelia I keen to meet on Monday to look at strategies and starting points for this work. We have a meeting at 11.30am so sometime before that would suit? @jonlemmon

yes! I'll be at the office at 9:00 AM @jonlemmon @johnirving @richarddbartlett

@aaronthornton @noelia I have a meeting at 10, but I could do 9:15am. =)

OK lets lock it in then 9:15

I'm in :)

I can't make it this morning sadly, but eagerly anticipate hearing about it afterwards!

Just a quick note: someone from Ushahidi recommended Transifex as a localisation tool that they used extensively. A nice email we got in the contact box this morning also recommended Transifex.

Also, someone from Evernote recommended something called Pootle for community translation. You can see what they did here: http://translate.evernote.com/, and see Pootle here: http://translate.sourceforge.net/wiki/pootle/live_servers

@benjaminknight Thanks Ben :-) I was looking for Transifex to propose it to the group but didn't remember the name...

@benjaminknight @franciscogeorgeppes Transifex looks awesome, and it also looks like it's free for open-source projects (yay!). Looking forward to trying it out. =)

Just an update, today I got roughly halfway through extracting all the language out of the app, which is the first step before translation can occur. I expect to have the bulk of this work completed tomorrow. Here's a taste of what that looks like.

As a side note, this is going to make it really easy for @benjaminknight and I to do an overhaul of the wording throughout the app, and also will make it easy to customise keywords for particular groups (e.g. proposal => suggestion).

It's cool to see @noelia making progress on the Español translation - welcome to the wonderful world of git, Noelia!

Perhaps next up, someonelike @johnirving wants to get onto coding a feature that will allow users to select their preferred language?

Oh @richarddbartlett you are awesome! looking forward to putting my fingers on it tomorrow :)

Could we contribute to git file @noelia @richarddbartlett ?

How can we translate to other languages? We need to wait until transifex is used or Noelia is using a english string file already generated?

@yago at the moment I prefer to do it on my own, this is part of my internship with loomio and I'm committed to achieve a high quality translation of the site, I believe consistency its an important part to achieve this im sure I will need some help in the future and Im happy to have on board :)

@richarddbartlett does that mean we need to do an overhaul of the English language choices before we'd be ready to start translating them?

Thanks everyone for your generous offers @yago, @franciscogeorgeppes, @mirceazachia, @dennislindner! It will be great to take you up on that once we have a decentralised process set up. I think to start out we should probably just get @noelia to complete the first Español translation. Then once this is finished, we can look at how to make the translation process more collaborative (which I'm really looking forward to!).

Workflow

I'm totally new to this so take it with a grain of salt, but here's the workflow I had in mind:

1. Extract the existing language into the English template
2. Review all the English language choices
3. Translate the first language (Español)
4. Activate the translation for users that prefer Español
5. Develop a scalable process for translating, maintaining and supporting additional languages in a decentralised collaborative way.

Resourcing

I'm three-quarters through step 1. @benjaminknight has volunteered to do step 2 with me in the next few days. @noelia is working closely with @aaronthornton and @jonlemmon to complete step 3. Step 4 requires some research and design (and someone to volunteer for the task).

Step 5 is going to require a lot of work in research, process design, implementation and coordination (I'm imagining a role of 'localisation coordinator' for someone). I'm not sure who has the capacity to fill that role, but they will need to have a good grasp of the cultural and technological aspects of localisation and the Loomio ethos.

Maybe that person is me (or @alannakrause...) but I'm at capacity already so it will mean dropping other commitments. I reckon it is pretty important to get this role filled in the near future, to connect the demand for multi-lingual support with the generous offers of help.

How does this workflow sound?

Sounds good. I think the first language (Spanish) can go ahead as a learning process. But we need to complete step 5 before we get carried away with lots of languages. I am interested in helping with step 5 when we get there.

What is the progress on spanish or the translation framework?

@noelia can you give an update here?

@mirceazachia Will be meeting on tuesday to revise translation with Rich gave him final document, and he will give me email bits which is final part. After I finish translating that " Loomio en Español" will be running but just as a test to make sure everything is in its right place and sounds good.

Happy to help if needed and happy to see people from Equo around !

Hello, whenever the developers are ready to recieve "Loomio em Português" I will be ready to do it.

receive... (nice way to propose a translation, with an error)

@filipesilva don't worry about it! I don't think any of can spell properly in Portuguese!

@miguelpradosrodriguez Not only EQUO :-), various Pirates are around too...

@franciscogeorgeppes power to participatory democracy !

Ready to help if some help is needed, ;-)
Mas facil en español....

Is there a way of integrating with the google translate api (paid, or any other api) to enable people in groups without common languages to have discusions?

Simon, I don't know about it but it would be a great idea to have the "Translate this" option under each comment (Just like facebook)

@simontegg There should be something like that somewhere. My Hootsuite twitter client allows me to translate any tweets in, my case, spanish. But I can't really say who is the translation provider.

Just an update: Noelia is 99% done on the Español translation - I've been holding up progress on this due to other priorities. I'm hoping to have this deployed for testing in the next few days.

This version will not include the mailers, as they are a little more complex, but there is progress on that problem too so they shouldn't be too far off.

Immediate next steps:

• someone volunteers to research the various localisation services (e.g. pootle, transifex, etc) so we can decide together which tool would be best suited to Loomio.
• we need to design the language selection feature that will allow users to choose their preferred language

FYI regarding the current proposal, I started a new thread explaining where the current development priorities are at. You can see multi-language support is on the list :)

@richarddbartlett
I can do the research on the tool. I already know transifex and can compare it with the rest. just would be easier to have an idea on what criteria are important for loomio.

Thanks @mirceazachia! The community support for this speaks volumes.

Update: @noelia @alannakrause and I are going to get together after the weekend to start sketching out ideas for what we envision a 'translation coordinator' role might look like. Stay tuned for more detailed feedback after Monday :)

I've been thinking about how we can work together to ensure the app has the best possible language choices throughout (e.g. appropriate to the local context, accessible, clear, etc.), and how translation can stay up to date with development of new features. It's going to be a fun collaboration!

A short review of steps in Transifex. It's so easy, that it can be setup in 10 minutes for any number of languages. We can compare it with other tools.

• create account, create translation project (proprietary / private, permissive open-source or other open-source) and set the source language: English. The open-source projects are free.
• then create project resources (ex. English POT or text file). Transifex will analyze the file, extract the translation strings from the file.
• add translation languages. They are predefined just need to be picked from a LOV. Translations can be done online in a nice editor or uploaded in a file.

Transifex will show graphically the translation percentage for each language, who and when was uploaded last translation. There are features for locking, owning, downloading translations and a cool dashboard with project activity.

You're awesome @mirceazachia! Thanks heaps for this

Transifex sounds/looks great. I think we should try it out as soon as we decide it's time to translate Loomio into another language besides Spanish (which I'm guessing is reasonably soon, since the Spanish translation is almost complete).

Te Reo Maori too pls. Can't forget our roots.

@noelia @richarddbartlett and I had a good chat about Translation today, and came up with the following plan:

-I would step in and be a point of contact for people interested in translation and help things go smoothly
-we'd start a 'translation' subgroup and invite people in it who want to be involved
-we'd focus for now on finishing Spanish as a way of learning the best tools and processes so we can best support other language translations after that

I guess I should introduce myself :) I have been involved with Loomio from the start and am based in the Wellington office where many Loomio team members are. I used to work as a translator myself (Japanese) and I am really interested in Loomio being accesible to people all over the world. I can help by facilitating communication among translators and with the Loomio code team. I hope I can offer help to all of you interested in making multilingual Loomio a reality.

So, I will begin by adding the people here who expressed interest into the new subgroup and kicking off a few discussions there.

The new group is here... if you want access please request it.

And to put a human face on it, here's a picture from our translation planning meeting this morning :)

@alannakrause Nice work. We should try to get Latin Americans in this too, as their Spanish is somehow different from the one of the peninsula :-)

@noelia I've sent the script in spanish for the screencast "How it works".

I started a translation team of Portuguese (Brazil). Please accept me in the group of loomio :https://www.loomio.org/groups/988

Portuguese (Brazil) done! 100% :)

When we will have that translation in loomio?

I forget to say, that Portuguese (Brazil) translation was a fast work of Pirate Party of Brazil guys :D

@alannakrause Is there a schedule to we have that translation in loomio?

@rafaelgomes it's on the priority list: more info about app development priorities here.

The language-setting feature needs to be designed before it can be developed. Anyone can start a discussion in the Features group to facilitate this design process :)

@richarddbartlett great! Sorry for the rush. This feature will improve the Brazilian utilization of the tool. I know some guys that know ruby a lot here, I will take about this with them.

My dream is to learn to develop in ruby. :)

Cool :) You don't need to be a coder to help design a feature though. In fact, it is useful to hear from non-coders: 'how would you expect this feature to work?'

@richarddbartlett IMHO we just need a dropdown to select our language.

Take a look that picture:

http://postimg.org/image/hnnbez003/

IMHO The language name should be written in your own language

@richarddbartlett Another thing! The browser should identify the language :)

Am I put this advice in a correct place?

@rafaelgomes Thanks for making an image to describe your idea, it makes the design process a lot easier than doing things in words!

I've set up a new discussion for this feature :)

@richarddbartlett my english is bad, because that I prefer use images sometimes to describe something :)

psss if you add "?locale=es" to the end of any loomio url, you can now see what the app will look like in Spanish!