Translation: Would regional translation fall back to primary language?

Translation: Would regional translation fall back to primary language?

[Luis Felipe]

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Hi,

I'd like to have Guix in Colombian Spanish (es-CO) but without translating the whole set of source strings. Instead, I'd like to be able to add translations only for those words and expressions whose current Spanish (es) translations don't sound that local.

es
└── es-CO

So, assuming an incomplete es-CO translation catalog already exists, would the translation system (gettext?) retrieve missing translations from the catalog corresponding to the primary language (es) or would it retrieve the source string in English?


Thanks in advance,

---
Luis Felipe López Acevedo
https://luis-felipe.gitlab.io/

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Re: Translation: Would regional translation fall back to primary language?

[pelzflorian (Florian Pelz)]

Hello Luis/sirgazil.  Translation help sounds great.

That said, I believe that, because others will add to the translation,
that it would be best if you Downloaded the Spain Spanish file from
Weblate and then uploaded that PO file as the first translation in
Colombian Spanish.  Then change it from that base.

Luis Felipe <luis.felipe.la@protonmail.com> writes:
> So, assuming an incomplete es-CO translation catalog already exists,
> would the translation system (gettext?) retrieve missing translations
> from the catalog corresponding to the primary language (es) or would
> it retrieve the source string in English?

I just tested adding a dummy de_CH.po translation file to Guix and yes,
it falls back to de translations if the msgstr in de_CH is empty, even
without changing the LANGUAGE environment variable and only setting
LC_ALL=de_CH.utf8.

But still, from an organizational view, I suggest not doing a partial
translation.  I don’t know though.

Regards,
Florian

Re: Translation: Would regional translation fall back to primary language?

[Liliana Marie Prikler]

Am Montag, dem 19.09.2022 um 13:53 +0200 schrieb pelzflorian (Florian
Pelz):
> But still, from an organizational view, I suggest not doing a partial
> translation.  I don’t know though.
I'd like to weaken this a little: Don't *intentionally* do a partial
translation.  With the insights you provided, I think it'd be fine to
fall back to regular Spanish if the Colombian translator is unavailable
for some while (due to vacation or what have you).

Cheers

Re: Translation: Would regional translation fall back to primary language?

[Luis Felipe]

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Hi Florian,


On Monday, September 19th, 2022 at 11:53, pelzflorian (Florian Pelz) <pelzflorian@pelzflorian.de> wrote:

> Hello Luis/sirgazil. Translation help sounds great.
> 

> That said, I believe that, because others will add to the translation,
> that it would be best if you Downloaded the Spain Spanish file from
> Weblate and then uploaded that PO file as the first translation in
> Colombian Spanish. Then change it from that base.

I think I'll go with that option, thanks.


> Luis Felipe luis.felipe.la@protonmail.com writes:
> 

> > So, assuming an incomplete es-CO translation catalog already exists,
> > would the translation system (gettext?) retrieve missing translations
> > from the catalog corresponding to the primary language (es) or would
> > it retrieve the source string in English?
> 

> I just tested adding a dummy de_CH.po translation file to Guix and yes,
> it falls back to de translations if the msgstr in de_CH is empty, even
> without changing the LANGUAGE environment variable and only setting
> LC_ALL=de_CH.utf8.

Oh, thanks for trying that. That's great then.


> But still, from an organizational view, I suggest not doing a partial
> translation. I don’t know though.

I don't know if I understand correctly the organizational problem related to leaving the es-CO catalog partially translated, intentionally. Is it that Weblate would display the es-CO translation as incomplete and so translators would end up duplicating work? (Start translating the rest of the catalog not knowing that the "es-CO" regional catalog is supposed to be left incomplete so that the missing translations are taken from the almost complete "es" catalog?)

Because if that's the case, I'd like to propose Weblate developers that progress gauges for regional catalogs take into account the progress of the primary language. That way, the progress of a regional catalog would always be greater or equal to the progress of the catalog of the primary language.

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Re: Translation: Would regional translation fall back to primary language?

[pelzflorian (Florian Pelz)]

Hello Luis.

Luis Felipe <luis.felipe.la@protonmail.com> writes:
> I think I'll go with that option, thanks.

:)


> I don't know if I understand correctly the organizational problem
> related to leaving the es-CO catalog partially translated,
> intentionally. Is it that Weblate would display the es-CO translation
> as incomplete and so translators would end up duplicating work? (Start
> translating the rest of the catalog not knowing that the "es-CO"
> regional catalog is supposed to be left incomplete so that the missing
> translations are taken from the almost complete "es" catalog?)

Yes, that is precisely what I expect to happen.


> Because if that's the case, I'd like to propose Weblate developers
> that progress gauges for regional catalogs take into account the
> progress of the primary language. That way, the progress of a regional
> catalog would always be greater or equal to the progress of the
> catalog of the primary language.

It’s not just the progress bars.  Yes, Weblate could somehow display it
as already translated if the fallback language has a translation, but
when downloading the PO file, other editors would not display it.

Regards,
Florian

Re: Translation: Would regional translation fall back to primary language?

[Luis Felipe]

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On Wednesday, September 21st, 2022 at 16:22, pelzflorian (Florian Pelz) <pelzflorian@pelzflorian.de> wrote:
 

> Luis Felipe luis.felipe.la@protonmail.com writes:
> 

> > Because if that's the case, I'd like to propose Weblate developers
> > that progress gauges for regional catalogs take into account the
> > progress of the primary language. That way, the progress of a regional
> > catalog would always be greater or equal to the progress of the
> > catalog of the primary language.
> 

> 

> It’s not just the progress bars. Yes, Weblate could somehow display it
> as already translated if the fallback language has a translation, but
> when downloading the PO file, other editors would not display it.

True.

Thanks again, Florian.

Cheers,

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