Beta.Babelzilla.org welcomes translators

Posted on 2012.11.09 Friday by Goofy

Hello, fellow babelzillians!

The time has come for the new Translation Board, and we’re happy to present you one.

Welcome beta.babelzilla.org. It serves the same goal as the old one – to localize Mozilla extensions, but it is prettier, faster and fancier to use. It is easier to look for a project, easier to see language status and, of course, do actual translating. And after you have done translating, it even allows you to grab the repacked XPI package for immediate testing!

Let’s quickly go through other notable bugfixes over the older system:

  • It does not have issues with DTD import and export, entities stay entities. But if you mean to have real tags in your DTD – so be it, we won’t get in your way.
  • Both .properties and .DTD files are parsed for comments, and those comments are displayed in the online editor. Which is quite pretty, btw.
  • It does not have a limit on the number of translators and coordinators in the team.
  • No locale code duplication. “pl” translators should not clash with “pl-PL” ones.

And besides being fun for translators, it has tons of goodies for project owners!

It allows a project owner to edit pretty much everything himself: assign and resign people, add and remove resources. And also customize his project’s page with a pretty icon up to 64x64px. Speaking of data access, we have kept previous functionality, you can still get ZIPs of all locales, URLs are:

  • http://beta.babelzilla.org/projects/p/PROJECT/download/replaced/
    (missing entities replaced with en-US)
  • http://beta.babelzilla.org/projects/p/PROJECT/download/empty/
    (missing entities set to “”)
  • http://beta.babelzilla.org/projects/p/PROJECT/download/skipped/
    (missing entities not present at all)

On top of that, we’re providing you with command-line access:

First step is to install our client, with
pip install git+https://github.com/tymofij/transifex-client.git@adofex#egg=transifex-client

then you would have access to the tx command utility. Let’s use it to grab our project
tx init –host=http://beta.babelzilla.org
(you will be prompted for username and password, but only once. They will go to ~/.transifexrc)

Then let’s initialize our project structure:
tx set –auto-remote http://beta.babelzilla.org/projects/p/PROJECT/ –file-filter=”<lang>/%(name)s”

file-filter is customizable, you can have it “locale/<lang>/%(name)s” or something of course.

And here the fun begins! We can pull source files with
tx pull -s
all translation with
tx pull -a
or just one with
tx pull -l LANG_CODE

While pulling you can specify –mode=skip (empty, replace – default) to your liking.
After you have done some editing, you can send changes to the server.
Source:
tx push -s
Translations:
tx push -t
One translation:
tx push -t -l LANG_CODE

So, if you have modified your source file, you do not need to come to the site and upload a new ZIP or XPI – you can do it with one “tx push -s”. And, if you have added/removed entities, “tx pull -a” will update your translation files accordingly. Though, occasionally, you might want to upload an XPI with just English or with stripped strings to the server — to let translators have proper repacks.

Migration status

We currently hand-migrated some popular addons there (Greasemonkey, Firebug, DownloadHelper), and will proceed with migrating the rest automatically soon, after having your feedback. If you are an addon developer eager to try things out – ping us, we will migrate you too.

All the teams and user accounts were migrated as well, so, please, if you had a Babelzilla account before, do not register, just reset your password and get instant access to the projects and teams you had before.

Have fun translating!

Open-Source

Unlike the previous Translation board, the new Babelzilla relies on the opensource core of the Transifex system and Django technology, so you’re welcome to submit patches and suggestions on GitHub. You can drop bugs and requests. Detailed instructions and (client) usage examples are also available there. You can help make the system better!

Thanks

I would like to thank Zbigniew Braniecki for his help and Silme library. Wladimir Palant for his patches and input. I am sorry that my past irresponsibleness led him to pick another system. Axel Grube helped a lot with beta-testing and Goofy was always an inspiration :)

Posted in Extensions around the world, Localization, Mozilla | 12 Comments

Checking accesskeys with Transvision on ver. 1.7

Posted on 2012.11.06 Tuesday by Goofy

As a localizer you know that choosing/testing/checking accesskeys is both necessary (see why in this simple tutorial for accesskeys) and some kind of nightmare.
To ease part of the problem, here is now an interesting new feature in Transvision that can help l10n teams to check their work.
First go to your now familiar Transvision and click on the link on bottom of the page.

You play a bit with dropdown menus selecting your lang and channel, then bang your wrong accesskeys (if any) are displayed

ak checking for Polish
In this example you can see on last line that there is no “o” character in string “Wyślij dźwięk…” so the shortcut is broken.
As usual, learn more on Pascal’s changelog and let us know any feedback or request on Transvision.

Posted in Extensions around the world, Localization | Tagged , , | Comments Off

Addons metrics over the world

Posted on 2012.10.22 Monday by Goofy

If you are interested in Addons, you will surely praise Kálmán Kéménczy for the nice work he has done localizing metrics for addons as can be seen on this Hungarian community page.
A first set of 20 languages has already been released and is available for communication and marketing purpose. Here is a taste of the Fula version:Fullah version for addons metrics
…but if ever you would like your language to join, just hop on this online doc and fill your column!

Thanks Kálmán, Reps and localizers community who contributed!

Posted in AMO, Extensions around the world | Comments Off

Transvision comparison feature makes l10n QA easier

Posted on 2012.10.18 Thursday by Goofy

Transvision is now on 1.6 version owing to the great work of Pascal Chevrel. Among various useful and interesting new features and fixes you can browse in the changelog, there is a smart comparison tool that can ease QA work for Mozilla localization teams. Now our localizer heroes have to manage three branches (Nightly-Aurora-Beta) and it is quite a job to maintain all in tune. So they may need to keep an eye on what should be pushed onto the next branch without forgetting any bit.
The idea is to offer a side-by-side display of two release channels and view what the differences are.
Of course first thing is to pick one’s language and choose two channels among central/aurora/beta/release with the little dropdown menus.
Then bang! here we have useful dump.

As you can see on this screenshot you can spot:

  • Minor typos fixed on one channel but not on the other one
  • Original (English) string pushed on a locale channel
  • Missing translations on one channel

Also you may notice the ellipsis char … is duly detected and highlighted in grey. This is just one more little feature that can help you finetune your localization.
Discover and enjoy everything Transvision has to offer, share your experience and wishlist, hack Transvision on github!

Posted in Localization, Mozilla | Tagged , , , | Comments Off

Mozillian Localizers: Enjoy Transvision 1.2

Posted on 2012.08.13 Monday by Goofy

If you are indulging in localization for Mozilla, you can’t ignore Transvision glossary. We have already introduced it here and there when it was just surfacing courtesy of our friend Philippe Dessante, long-time Mozilla volunteer contributor.
Here are very good news! Development has now been taken over by Pascal Chevrel, well-known Web localization lead as Mozilla employee, who devotes his free time on Mozilla volunteer community he comes from and still feels he is part of. Thanks Pascal!
We are glad you can enjoy a 1.2 version with lots of code and usability improvements that make Transvision a more efficient tool for translation and proofreading.
Complete changelog is yours but the best thing to do is to test and enjoy it.
* Change your bookmark for this new URL:
http://transvision.mozfr.org/
(note that your search language is automatically matching your browser useragent language)
* Fork your own Transvision and contribute to development on github:
https://github.com/mozfr/transvision

More fixes and changes are cooking, stay tuned.

Posted in Extensions around the world | Comments Off

Let’s localize jetpacks. At last.

Posted on 2012.04.12 Thursday by Goofy

For years now we have been wondering (and asking with insistence) how we translators shall provide locales for jetpacks. Owing to Alexandre Poirot aka ochameau on #jetpack (thanks Mozilla for having found and trusted the right man for this mission), this might be the final answer.
First thing that is quite satifying for translators: the locale format will be good old .properties, which is robust and familiar among us.
Second thing is: testing jetpacks with fresh locales (once translation work is done) does not require any technical ability (no special script nor command line is necessary to inject the file). All you have to do is play a bit with one special extension which does the job seamlessly for you.

But please try by yourself and enjoy:
1. Install this version of Collusion extension on your Firefox – No browser restart necessary.
2. Download this en-US.properties file and translate it in your own language with one correct text editor (remember UTF-8 is your friend and no ominous BOM please). Name your file as {MylangCode-prefix}.properties, e.g: “pt-BR.properties” or “de.properties”
3. Install locale-updater extension by the incredible Alexandre Poirot. No browser restart necessary.
4. In the addon manager of your browser, spot Collusion in the list and click the “Update l10n” button which is now on the left.
5. A window is opening asking you for a file, choose your xx.properties and send it.
6. Collusion addon is automatically uninstalled and reinstalled with updated localization files. Your lang should appear in Collusion interface. No browser restart necessary.

Some observations

This version of Collusion is patched to use the upcoming HTML localization feature coming soon in Jetpack. It allows to extract strings from HTML page and expose them as plain old properties for the translators. Extension developers are welcome to comment and suggest.
Locale-updater extension is on github: hack and improve as you like it.

Next step: having .properties files from jetpacks submitted here on BabelZilla for easy translation, on the current “old” WTS or on its future Adofex-based version which is under progress. Stay tuned!

Posted in Extensions around the world | Comments Off

New Translation Teams: localize 3 top extensions for your language

Posted on 2012.04.11 Wednesday by Goofy

We are very glad to see surfacing new localization teams working hard to release their language langpacks for Firefox, some are already available, some are still in progress. Here is a selection in no particular order:

Acholi
Fulah
Wolof
Kashubian
Ligurian
Nahuatl
Tarahumara
Tseltal
Zapotec
Khmer
Guarani
…
Localizers, you just rock!

Now we have a simple invitation: as soon as main goals are reached and the langpack for the application itself is released, we suggest you should indulge in translation for let’s say 3 top popular extensions, so that your users might have a complete experience in their language. Maybe Adblock Plus, Video DownloadHelper and Personas Plus. Of course these are just our suggestions, feel free to pick whatever you like. Here the list of AMO most popular extensions.
As most of them are hosted for translation on BabelZilla, you have a simple way to translate online. You have just to register with a valid email. Then pick the extension you wish and translate. Several contributors can register for the same translation so team work is possible and recommended. More on this little guide.
In case you miss your language slot in the list, just ring the bell with a quick message to techadmin at babelzilla.org.

Mmmh.. Localizers for established locales, why not having the top 10 extensions translated if not yet available? ;-)

Posted in Extensions around the world | Tagged , , , , , , | 14 Comments

BabelZilla Code of Conduct

Posted on 2012.03.31 Saturday by Goofy

Since we recently had some trouble on our forums with controversial declarations, we at babelzilla-governance found it was necessary to set up a Code of Conduct based on the highest possible moral standards in order to let peace and diversity overflow our community like a tsunami of love.
We created a special task force of wise guys and we finally can release this very exhaustive set of rules. Enjoy! (and Beware)

0. This site and community is mainly dedicated to translation of addons for Mozilla apps. If you wish to tell us about your personal religious, political or philosophical options or whatever sexual orientation, it is highly recommended you do that on any other channel available on the Internet and not on BabelZilla, because it is just irrelevant here.

1. BabelZilla is no substitute for moral code. You are responsible for your behaviour. If you post material which may create controversial debate or hostile reaction, consider this is your responsibility. Think twice and be responsible.

Posted in Extensions around the world, Mozilla | Tagged , , | 3 Comments

Make your extension compatible with SeaMonkey, if you can

Posted on 2011.12.28 Wednesday by iacchi

Extensions are great. They’re one of the technical reasons (the Manifesto comes first, of course) that make us choose Firefox, and they usually help us to save the day.

Firefox is Mozilla main and most used product, and of course if you want to create an extension Firefox is your main target. But why limit yourself to Firefox?
You may not know it, but if your extension isn’t too complex, and it doesn’t rely on Firefox-specific technologies, it will probably be compatible with SeaMonkey out of the box, all you have to do is to register SeaMonkey in the install.rdf file, with this code:

<em:targetApplication>
  <RDF:Description>
    <em:id>{92650c4d-4b8e-4d2a-b7eb-24ecf4f6b63a}</em:id>
    <em:minVersion>min version</em:minVersion>
    <em:maxVersion>max version</em:maxVersion>
  </RDF:Description>
</em:targetApplication>

so that all of the SeaMonkey users can benefit from your extension, installing it painlessly and receiving the automatic updates from a.m.o. With the rapid release process is even easier, because the gecko version on Firefox and SeaMonkey is strictly related, so you can discover easily which are the correct min and max version numbers.
Everything you have to do is to loose 5 minutes of your time to try your extension on SeaMonkey, that’s all.

Not all of the extensions work out of the box, though. I’m not an extension developer and I don’t know anything about xul or js (so don’t ask me for help), but I’ve discovered that in some cases the compatibility with SeaMonkey is just one line of code far.
If you have to register some component (e.g. a stylesheet) in chrome.manifest and you have a line similar to this:

style chrome://browser/content/browser.xul chrome://myext/skin/mystyle.css

everything you have to do to make it compatible with SeaMonkey is to add this other line in the same file:

style chrome://navigator/content/navigator.xul chrome://myext/skin/mystyle.css

this is the case of extensions like xclear, Reader and Readability.

In some cases this is not enough, and then I don’t know how to help you, but I want to ask you all, extension developers, to spend these 5 minutes to install SeaMonkey and check these two easy things.

In this way we’ll all win: SeaMonkey users will be able to benefit the functions of your extension, and you’ll get hundreds of possible new users.

Posted in Tech Room! | Tagged | 3 Comments

MozCamp EU Berlin & Next step for BabelZilla

Posted on 2011.11.20 Sunday by Goofy

Learning and meeting

I have been lucky enough to be invited to MozCamp Europe in Berlin last week-end and enjoyed the meeting very much on every aspect: have a better insight of what is cooking in Mozilla headquarters, discover amazing projects, having fun together, but above all I am glad I met people in real life and in some cases have an interesting discussion about addons localization on BabelZilla.
First of all, I was very glad to meet our good old Jürgen Berg aka Fenian. It was the first time we met in real life, though we have been working and communicating together on a daily basis for 6 years. I also met for the first time Lakrits who is at the moment our top contributor translating for Swedish, the old-timer teo who is translating for Polish, was pleased to meet again George (aka Sonickydon) from Greece and some others whose face and nick are now familiar to me. I really hope we shall have another occasion to meet other BabelZillians in the future.

Talking about addons localization

A significant number of various sessions were focussing on addons and localization at this MozCamp, which is but justified, considering addons are crucial for the browser, whether they are for old desktop or for mobile which is now major battlefield for Mozilla.
Among various sessions, I attended this very interesting one about the way Jetpacks would be localized in the future. As JSON was a candidate for file format, it seems the community discussion lead to some other localizer-friendly choice. We shall see how our own system can parse this kind of files, but it seems rather easy to handle.
I also gave a short presentation about the current state and issues on BabelZilla and what our goals for next steps are.
You can have slides here. There were a couple of questions and a very grateful Ken Barbalace (the developer of the Classic Compact Options extension), then it was time to leave room for Adofex, (demo) which can be the next step for BabelZilla, replacing gradually our good old WTS. Don’t be afraid, transition will be scheduled smoothly, some key features we currently enjoy on BabelZilla are still to be ported or implemented on Adofex, but hey Tim will develop his already smart tool to be tested and used on BabelZilla, so that you the user community, whether you are newcomers or old-timers, can provide useful feedback and help us create the best possible system together. Also, he would be glad to receive your feedback on the talk and the teams organization.
Tim will soon post here and explain what the interest of Adofex is for Babelzilla and which will be his next step on development. Stay tuned!

Posted in Extensions around the world, Localization, Mozilla, WTS (Web Translation System) | 3 Comments