Closed Bug 674433 Opened 13 years ago Closed 13 years ago

Localizer cannot find strings used for about:addons (l10n strings should be split by it's priority)

Categories

(addons.mozilla.org Graveyard :: Localization, defect)

defect
Not set
normal

Tracking

(Not tracked)

RESOLVED WONTFIX

People

(Reporter: bugzilla, Unassigned)

References

Details

Add-on Manager is built-in UI of Firefox and I believe it should be localized even if localizers cannot take enough time to localize whole AMO site.
# about:addons l10n is important as Firefox UI l10n

Localization for AMO is currently done with Verbatim
https://localize.mozilla.org/ja/amo/LC_MESSAGES/

But all the strings for AMO including strings for Add-on Manager (about:addons) are also included in the LC_MESSAGES. To make localizers possible to focus on translating about:addons strings l10n strings of AMO should be split into several files according to the priority like:
 - P1: strings used in about:addons (or any other Firefox built-in UI)
 - P2: strings used in main pages of AMO
 - P3: other strings like error message etc.
Blocks: 635826
OS: Mac OS X → All
Hardware: x86 → All
Thanks for the bug, but splitting the .po files up would be more complex to write, maintain, and contribute to.

A better course of action here is to increase the bandwidth of the L10n teams by, for example, utilizing the crowd sourcing features of Verbatim.  AMO can send plenty of potential localizers to Verbatim if they are equipped to handle the new folks.  If not, that's where the technical contributions should go - not into splitting up the .po files.
Status: NEW → RESOLVED
Closed: 13 years ago
Resolution: --- → WONTFIX
I suppose it's worth mentioning that each msgid in the .po file also contains the file path where it's used so you could parse that out with your own script and narrow the scope of the .po file that way.
I don't think that throwing manpower at the problem makes the problem scale. Even if verbatim wasn't such a troubling experience to many of our l10n teams.

I do think that it'd be worthwhile to split the AMO strings into user-facing, developer-facing and admin. Whether it makes sense to be as granular as in-product, I don't know.

The "one huge pile" is at least one of the reasons why we don't actively manage AMO localizations, I'd say. If we had smaller chunks with a clear target, I would expect localizers to be much more engaged with localizing AMO.
You cannot just expect that more localizers will come. Before the switch from PHP to Python, I maintained a script to filter out all the strings only shown to admins, editors and developers , since they are just a waste of time to translate. These strings are around 3/4 of the whole AMO site.

I gave up around the switch to Python because the l10n story was just too messy and we were basically asked to re-translate the entire site. And I just didn't manage to catch up afterwards.

My filter from some time ago is at
https://svn.mozilla.org/addons/trunk/site/app/locale/da/LC_MESSAGES/filter.txt
Where P=Public, E=Editor, D=Developer, S=Statistics
(In reply to comment #4)
> You cannot just expect that more localizers will come.

Yes, better tool or environment will not promise for more localizers.
But lack of tool nor document is promise for less localizers I believe.
# ex. MDC had lost significant contributers after they switch to DekiWiki
# whose l10n support is very poor than before

We japanese team already working for main part of AMO l10n but it was difficult to find proper set of strings and could not translate enough yet.
Recently we are trying to translate more, especially for about:addons page since it's part of Firefox UI.

If you cannot split the strings, could you tell me how can we find/filter strings used for about:addons page?

(In reply to comment #2)
> I suppose it's worth mentioning that each msgid in the .po file also
> contains the file path where it's used so you could parse that out with your
> own script and narrow the scope of the .po file that way.

If possible, we want to use verbatim since some contributors are already using it and want to avoid conflicting. But AFAIK verbatim cannot search with filename (or any string) written in the comment. So I think we cannot filter.

The only way to filter is to use git/svn?
# not all but our new localizer can use it and we can do it
# even if he cannot, I'll help to use git/svn of course

I find AMO repo is https://github.com/jbalogh/zamboni/ but I'm not sure which file path is used for which UI. Could you tell us how to filter about:addons strings?
# I also think message.po files are still in svn.mozilla.org.
# Which files on the svn.mozilla.org is still used? only po files?
One more question

(In reply to comment #4)
> Before the switch from PHP to Python, I maintained a script to filter out 
> all the strings only shown to admins, editors and developers ...

This means, now all the strings in the .po files are for users and all strings should be translated finally?
(In reply to dynamis (Tomoya ASAI) from comment #6)
> One more question
> 
> (In reply to comment #4)
> > Before the switch from PHP to Python, I maintained a script to filter out 
> > all the strings only shown to admins, editors and developers ...
> 
> This means, now all the strings in the .po files are for users and all
> strings should be translated finally?

No. It means that I once made my own script for the Danish localization which took one .po file from AMO as input and produced another .po file with only the strings, which should be translated. I have not maintained the script for a while, so it would need updating to add the source folders added by the AMO developers since then. The script is written in Java with a separate text file with filter rules, which I linked above. I can send it to you if you would like it.
Product: addons.mozilla.org → addons.mozilla.org Graveyard
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