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itch.io Community » itch.io » Developer Updates » Feature Discussion

Translating itch.io

A topic by leafo created Jan 31, 2019 Views: 28,849 Replies: 80
Viewing posts 1 to 20 of 67 · Next page · Last page
leafoAdmin5 years ago (17 edits) (+29)

Welcome to the itch.io community translation project!

The website was originally built as an English only project, but in the past week I've built tooling and started extracting strings for translation. We're using the same system we used for the desktop app. (If you were an approved translator on that project then your account is ready to go.) The website has a lot of text so this is going to be an ongoing project (both extracting and translating). Here's how you can participate:

Quick start:

  • Join the translations channel on our discord (optional)
    • add yourself to the translator role to be notified of updates to translations
  • Go to Weblate, create an account
  • Read the Markup guide to learn how the translation syntax works
    • Follow these rules before suggesting a new translation string
      • ALWAYS use every {{variable}} that appears in the source translation, double check there are no typos
      • ALWAYS use every <tag> that appears in the source translation string. Ensure you use a proper closing </tag>
      • Failure to follow these guidelines may result in breaking the translation test suite and blocking translations from being processed. Just as a reminder
      • Reminder: The string "0 notifications" and "No notifications" are different. If you see a variable for plural version of 0 count, you must use the variable. Don't change the phrasing of the string.
  • If a language you want to translate isn't available yet, ask us to add it in this thread or on discord
  • If you'd like to be an Approved Translator, someone who can save translations and review others, contact us in our Discord or in this thread with the language you'd like to work on.
  • You can enable a language on itch.io from your accounts settings page.





How to help with translating

  • We use web-based software called Weblate to help us manage translations. You can join it here https://weblate.itch.ovh/projects/itchio/
  • itch.io's translations are split in a few components:
  • Read the markup syntax guide before working on translations: https://github.com/itchio/itchio-i18n#translations-markup-guide
    • Follow these rules before suggesting a new translation string:
      • ALWAYS use every {{variable}} that appears in the source translation, double check there are no typos
        • Note: The string "0 notifications" and "No notifications" are different. If you see a variable for plural version of 0 count, you must use the variable. Don't change the phrasing of the string.
      • ALWAYS use every <tag> that appears in the source translation string. Ensure you use a proper closing </tag>. Failure to do so will break the functionality of the page for those using the translation.
      • Failure to follow these rules will break the test suite. Translations will not be merged back into the website until the test suite is fixed: https://github.com/itchio/itchio-i18n/actions
  • If you're trying to work on a language that isn't there yet, you'll need to request it to be added by an approved translator or admin. You can ask in the Discord channel.
  • To start translating, you can click the Translate button next to your language of choice
    • For many strings, we provide context screenshots. You can see them on the right of the translation page
    • You can use the Translation Memory and Machine Translation features to help you put together a translation
    • You can leave comments on text, and vote on suggestions
    • Weblate has many features to help organize translation projects. We recommend taking some time to click around to learn how the user interface works.
  • Anyone can make a suggestion on Weblate, but only approved translators can save the translation to be merged back into the website.
    • Ideally, approved translators are fluent in the language they are applying for. You should have a record of submitting strings before you request to be an approved translator. Don't apply if you haven't actually contributed anything yet.
  • If you come across English text that doesn't translate well, please tell us so we can work out a solution. Try to avoid using bad grammar. Many times we can rework the source text to be easier to translate.
  • Try to use a neutral tone when translating. 

Debugging translations

  • You can force itch.io to use a translation by appending ?locale=LANGUAGE_CODE to any page. (eg. https://itch.io?locale=ru)
  • You can use ?locale=debug to show all translations keys. This can help you find where a particular string is located in Weblate

Testing translations

Since we're at an early stage with translations we aren't turning it on for anyone by default. You can, however, opt-in to languages that we already have translations for. You can find a drop-down on your account settings page: 


Please use the translations and look for errors. Since many languages only have partial translations, and many strings have not been pulled out for translation yet, we don't need reports of missing translations at this time. If you find a mistake you can make a suggestion or leave a comment using Weblate. (You don't need an account to leave a suggestion right now). Weblate's search tool can help you find the right string.

FAQ

  • Right to left? We haven't started investigating what this involves. Ideally we'd like to get some LTR languages in a good state first, but feel free to provide translations for strings on Weblate for any RTL languages, and I can start testing things.
  • Translated project pages? The plan is to allow any text field on itch.io to provided in multiple languages. This will be a separate change from this project, but we'll focus on giving project pages this functionality first.
  • Regional pricing? This will come as a separate update, but something we want to address by giving developers the option to set prices by currency/region.
  • Will my browser start showing another language automatically? Not any time soon. Additionally, there's a language setting you can use to force the site to be in whatever language you like. I can imagine in the future we will use your browser's preferred language to automatically select a language on itch.io. If we make this change, we'll make the language picker easier to access.
  • I want to see a specific page translated! Great. We are incrementally pulling out strings for translation, if a page your want is not available yet please tell us.
  • I'm a professional translator, will you hire me? Maybe, we don't know our international strategy quite yet but for priority languages we're open to hiring help for high quality and high coverage translations. You can email us through support@itch.io

Thanks for your help, and I look forward to a fully internationalized itch.io

Reply
Daniel Savage5 years ago(+9)

Really looking forward to language-specific project page text! At the moment other languages are simply on the same page, and it’d be great to simplify this for visitors

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psyche22112 years ago

same

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Kannushi Link5 years ago (2 edits) (+11)

I'd like to help to translate to Chinese (Traditional).

But it's not on the list at the moment, can you add it please?

------

EDIT: Issue solved after chatted with admin on Discord, thank you!

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Cavalary5 years ago(+6)

You may consider this off topic, but since it was mentioned in the OP, just wanted to ask to please NOT add regional pricing. It's an absolutely rotten industry practice, charging people differently depending on which lines on a map some bits go to. Some may argue for regional discounts for some countries, and I guess it could be tolerable if they choose to make their work more affordable there, but there's no way to do even that properly, since there are plenty of poor countries not getting discounts, or getting lower ones than better off countries, and there are also lots of poor people even in countries considered wealthy. But more importantly, overcharging (compared to the standard price, generally considered to be the US one) any country is of course way worse, even more so when you have that standard model of EUR = USD for EU countries, including those not using the Euro, even the poorest ones.

Since you support multiple currencies and developers can set the price in the one they choose, it'd be nice for the customer to be able to pay in their currency of choice if among the supported ones, at the current exchange rate, but other than that, or if even this would for some reason imply actual regional pricing, please don't. Now with GOG even removing their "fair price package", five years after deciding to allow regional pricing after having "one world, one price" as the 2nd clear, specific pillar of their mission statement for the first 5.5 years of their existence, as far as I know it's just you and Zoom that still push back against this (even if without making a point of it)...

Would be a very good thing to support more payment methods though, including as part of a localization effort, as there are various ones that are popular in certain countries. And starting with prepaid cards, like Paysafecard (or something else if equally widely available, that's the one I know of, and use for any such purchases, so can't make any here yet...).

Hope this wasn't too much of an off-topic rant...

Reply
leafoAdmin5 years ago (1 edit) (+2)

Thanks for the feedback. Adding support for showing a purchase flow in a local currency is a high priority for us. That is tied very closely to regional pricing though, we bucket currencies and regions together when we talk about the regional pricing project. In any case, the pricing configuration will be up to the creators, so we won't be forcing any pricing scheme on anyone for the foreseeable future. (unless we learn that some kind of automatic currency exchange for showing localized prices helps conversion a lot, then we'll probably automate that)

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Cavalary5 years ago(+3)

If you won't force flat pricing anymore, they'll go with the rotten "industry standard" as they do everywhere else... :(

Reply
Wasted Audio141 days ago

Can you explain what you think is “rotten” about this?

Purchasing power is objectively different in other regions, but you want to force people with low income to pay significantly higher prices? (in some cases orders of magnitude different)

I don’t get it.

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Cavalary141 days ago

*sigh* This same discussion every time.

People who oppose regional pricing refer to the regions that get HIGHER prices than the base (US) one, like the EU and EEA, including the poorer EU countries, sometimes even non-EU Serbia and Montenegro, AU/NZ, sometimes Japan... People who support it refer to the regions that get LOWER prices, like Latin America, former CIS states, China, where not banned Russia (for which massively lower pricing was initially introduced, not because of the purchasing power but to make legal purchases compete with the powerful Russian "piracy" market).

The thing about basing it on country is that you can't make it fair for the people. There are plenty of poor people in wealthier countries that are doubly harmed by it and some wealthy people in poor countries that doubly benefit. And even at country level, it's not fair overall, because it's not actually based on purchasing power, but on marketing and sales. For example most African countries generally don't get regional price cuts because publishers don't expect sales there anyway, so they just don't bother, even though if you'd base it on disposable income they should get the lowest prices.

Still, despite such differences remaining inherently unfair either way they're applied, I wouldn't personally complain if the regional pricing matrix would just have one maximum price that'd apply for all the wealthier countries (US/CA, Western and Northern Europe, AU/NZ, JP, probably South Korea), and either the same price or lower for the rest. But make sure that no non-wealthy country pays more than a wealthy one.

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Wasted Audio141 days ago (2 edits)

Of course within a country there are differences, but I don’t want to force people from a region where there are orders of magnitude different purchasing power to pay a relatively insane amount of money for my products.

I hope you understand that it doesn’t make any sense for those cases.

Calling this “rotten” makes you look like a heartless fool.

But sure I agree that this would need some proper tuning to apply correctly. It’s a good practice if applied sensibly, imo. And I believe that the current global flat rate is senseless.

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Cavalary140 days ago (2 edits)

Again, while still unfair, if you'd want to offer discounts to some regions, I wouldn't personally take a stand against it. But if you claim to do it for such reasons, you should strive to apply those discounts for all poorer regions, not "forget" about those that actually are the poorest, like I was saying about offering discounts to Latin America or China or the former CIS region but not to (most of) Africa or Southeast or Central Asia...

But what I really do take a stand against and call rotten is if you'd (also) want to apply the typical 1 USD (for US price) = 1 EUR (for EU price, even for non-Euro countries) rate, or similar price hikes for UK or AU/NZ, because there's no way to claim that the purchasing power there is far greater than that of the US (except in Luxembourg), and in most of the EU it's lower.

Edit: So an acceptable regional pricing scheme would involve a flat price for the wealthy countries, no possibility for regional pricing between them, and let's say we can define wealthy as above double the world average taken by purchasing power parity, which actually gets us at the moment to a round number of 30 countries, down to NZ, as per https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/rankings/gdp_per_capita_ppp/ And for any other countries you could set the price as a percentage of that base/maximum one, which percentage must not exceed 100%, and any price you set for one country automatically becomes the maximum one for those ranked below it. That should fully cover the cases you use to argue in favor of it, correct?

But it's not how typically it's done...

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Wasted Audio140 days ago

We don’t have to follow how it’s “typically” done. Of course the aim is to do it properly and actually reflects the intent to make our software accessible at comparable rates across the globe.

Right now my software is only accessible in wealthy countries, which is a shame.

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Auburn Sounds5 years ago(+5)

Wow very cool, this will allow multi-language checkout!

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Padramyr5 years ago(+1)

Hey there :)

I would like to become an approved translator for German. I'm a native speaker so I know most of the needed terms. There are a whole bunch of suggestions for the translations that need to be approved ^^

I made some translation suggestions for German already so you can see some of my work :)

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leafoAdmin5 years ago(+2)

Can you tell me your username on weblate, thanks!

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Padramyr5 years ago(+2)

It should also be Padramyr.

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Filip Š4 years ago(+1)

Can you add Slovenian language?

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luizgachatuber4 years ago(+1)

oi

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Janos Biro4 years ago (1 edit)

Please, I'd like to be an Approved Translator for Brazilian Portuguese. I have a decent experience with translations like this, and I want to see the pt-BR done as soon as possible. My username in weblate is janosbiroleite.

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Fupicat4 years ago(+1)

How do I vote on suggestions? The Brazillian Portuguese translations have many suggestions but I can't vote on any of them.

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SRWeaver4 years ago (1 edit) (+1)

It seems French is available. I assume this is for the website itself? (Currently learning French.)

Erp, I mean as in someone who has skills in French should take the job.

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leafoAdmin4 years ago(+2)

The app and a much of the website is already available in French!

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Omar_Gamer4 years ago(+1)

Hello Sir, i will begin working on arabic

so please if you can please give my proofreading status on the project

i am professional translator and i really want to have full arabic support for this app and store

Thanks

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Morevna Project4 years ago

Is it possible to make the interface language to be switched automatically depending on language set in browser? This way the website will get localized even for non-registered users. Currently, when non-registered user purchases something the interface is displayed in English...

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leafoAdmin4 years ago(+1)

This is something we’d like to have at some point, but the coverage of our translations isn’t there yet, so we don’t want to give buyers the impressive we can support them in their native language fully.

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Cris Animation4 years ago

ciao

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battyRabbit4 years ago(+1)

Just looked at the available languages and percentages

Noticed a small bug about arabic

Keep up the good work :)

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Starnest4 years ago

Excuse me, but I applied to be an approved translator but changed my discord name afterwards, should I apply again?

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leafoAdmin4 years ago(+1)

If you already have an account on weblate that’s ready to go then you don’t have to worry about applying again

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Starnest4 years ago

Okay! Thank you for replying. 

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meluimelom4 years ago(+1)

hi to get

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rebwar3 years ago

I'd like to help to translate to Kurdish (Sorani) .

please can you add it to list ?

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