Closed Bug 845961 Opened 11 years ago Closed 8 years ago

Replace Verbatim with Pontoon

Categories

(developer.mozilla.org Graveyard :: Localization, enhancement)

All
Other
enhancement
Not set
normal

Tracking

(Not tracked)

RESOLVED WORKSFORME

People

(Reporter: openjck, Unassigned)

Details

(Whiteboard: [specification][type:change][might-expire][triaged])

What problems would this solve?
===============================
We currently use Verbatim to manage localization of landing pages and some other non-article content.

Because Verbatim is so separated from the rest of the site, some potential localizers do not know that it exists and conclude that this content simply cannot be localized. See bug 844864 for an example of this confusion.

Unlike Verbatim, Pontoon allows localizers to translate without leaving the site. Pontoon provides the additional benefit of making localization a visual task, which could perhaps make the work more enjoyable and lead to more better prioritization ("Let me edit this section first, since it is the most prominent thing on the homepage").

https://pontoon-dev.mozillalabs.com/en-US/

Who would use this?
===================
Localizers. I doubt there would be much difference between these localizers and the localizers that translate articles.

What would users see?
=====================
To encourage localization, maybe we could have a "Translate" button on any page that contains non-localizable text.

What would users do? What would happen as a result?
===================================================
Once the user clicks "Translate", Pontoon would take over. See the Pontoon demo for more on what that would look like.

https://pontoon-dev.mozillalabs.com/en-US/locale/de/project/testpilot/

Is there anything else we should know?
======================================
This is definitely a blue sky idea... but what if we managed all localization through Pontoon, including article localization?

Using Pontoon instead of Verbatim would be a definite improvement, but I suspect having two different localization systems for content that /looks/ essentially the same is bound to confuse users at some level one way or the other.
Component: General → Localization
Severity: normal → enhancement
Whiteboard: [specification][type:feature] → [specification][type:change][might-expire][triaged]
See also some discussion in bug 671725
It's an interesting idea and I like it for landing pages and other content. Will this also affect interface translation or will that continue to be in Verbatim?

I want to get input from the Mozilla l10n community (they are involved in bug 671725) to make sure they would support this transition. Currently, a lot of the IU string translation is done by the l10n community, as opposed to the MDN writing community as assumed above, so I want to make sure this is compatible with their workflow as well as the MDN editor workflow.
Pontoon looks nice for static websites, but I'm not sure how it would handle stateful web applications, authentication, user actions, interactions with backend databases, etc.
Flags: needinfo?(m)
We did Affiliates in the past and we'll do Mozilla.org soon, so I don't think that's a problem.

If there's anything we can do to make the experience better for localizers, we'll do it.
Flags: needinfo?(m)
It would be nice to be able to break up stateful webapps into individual components (pages), all splayed out with the strings to match, instead of having to reproduce the state manually in the UI.
We already have support for subpages.

At this very moment I'm working on adding the ability to match subpages with resource files (=strings).

Let's continue the discussion there:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1180254
What Mozilla "webparts" projects can work with Pontoon for now?
I think this happened already (I see most MDN locales, all important ones, but sq, at least, under Pontoon).

Matjaz: is there something specific to be done on MDN side?

I'm tempted to close this as WORKSFORME.
Flags: needinfo?(m)
Yeah, this was self-resolved as part of bug 1214260.
Status: NEW → RESOLVED
Closed: 8 years ago
Flags: needinfo?(m)
Resolution: --- → WORKSFORME
Product: developer.mozilla.org → developer.mozilla.org Graveyard
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