Beta.Babelzilla.org welcomes translators

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="/%(name)s"

file-filter is customizable, you can have it “locale//%(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=skipped

(empty, replaced – 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 🙂

This entry was posted in Extensions around the world, Localization, Mozilla. Bookmark the permalink.

12 Responses to Beta.Babelzilla.org welcomes translators

  1. Pingback: Adofex at MozCamp 2011: Team-team-team » Tim Babych’s thoughts

  2. Jonathan says:

    Where can I file bugs on the new system?

  3. milupo says:

    It isn’t possible yet to specify more than one translation language in profile. I translate for Upper Sorbian, Lower Sorbian, Esperanto and German.

  4. Pingback: It lives! » Tim Babych’s thoughts

  5. gymka says:

    When beta stage will over and all extension will be moved there?

    • Goofy says:

      — As soon as we are ready 🙂
      This is under discussion, of course, because we want to offer a good seamless experience, and the current state is: everything runs fine with some bugs and missing features.

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