[etoys-dev] Re: [squeak-dev] Localization for Squeak products

K. K. Subramaniam subbukk at gmail.com
Tue Jan 19 14:43:43 UTC 2010


On Tuesday 19 January 2010 03:20:30 pm Bert Freudenberg wrote:
> It's even simpler than that - some tools count strings, some words. Etoys
>  currently has 4412 translatable strings with 27454 words in them.
5k is still a lot of strings to localize in one shot. The problem with coding 
in English first and then farming the batch of strings for localization is that 
localization will always lag in both time and quality.

Why not allow users to translate strings on the fly using a hot key? If I see a 
button label or error message in English I should be able to use a hot key 
(translateIt) to pop out a translator which allows me to edit the translations 
in that context. If the base string changes, existing translations could be 
flagged as obsolete but still left in place. Obsolete translations could be 
displayed in a different style (gray?) or dropped in favor of a current default 
translation to alert users for the need to retranslate.

Even non-programmers can participate as peers during development phase for a 
simultaneous multilingual release.

This is difficult to do in other languages but should be feasible in a dynamic 
language like Smalltalk.

Subbu



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