Translations

Getting Started

It’s really easy to start contributing translations using the Computer Science Field Guide

  1. Read this documentation page, especially the Translation Notes section.

  2. Create an account on Crowdin.

  3. Visit the Computer Science Field Guide Crowdin page.

  4. Start translating!

Crowdin Overview

We use a localisation management platform called Crowdin for translation of the Computer Science Field Guide. Our project is public, meaning that anyone can create an account and contribute translations.

Crowdin has excellent documentation for translators, and all translators should read the following documents:

Translation Phases

There are 3 translation phases used to ensure high quality translation of Computer Science Field Guide content:

  1. Translation

  2. Proofread

  3. Technical Review

In the inital translation phase, anyone (who has created an account with Crowdin) can contribute translations. These translations are then reviewed by a designated proofreader who will check the translations for accuracy and consistency. To request to become a proofreader, please contact one of the Crowdin project managers.

Note

While not enforced by Crowdin, proofreaders should not approve their own translations. Instead, they should be reviewed by a different proofreader.

Finally, a technical review will be performed by a member of the Computer Science Field Guide technical team. In this review, technical components such as Verto tags and document structure will be checked.

Translation notes

Note

On Crowdin, Markdown files are translated on a per-sentence basis. There may be some cases where this is not desirable, and some paragraph level restructuring is required to convey a concept in a given language.

In these cases, it could be possible to work around this with tricks such as

  • translating one sentence into the translation box for another.

  • translating a sentence into a blank string.

These techniques are highly discouraged as they fight against many aspects of the Crowdin system including

  • QA checks that ensure translations match the structure of the source strings.

  • Translation memory.

  • In context localisation.

  • Special Verto tags which are within curly braces { } should not be translated, except for text after alt in an image tag. For example, for the following text:

    {image file-path="img/chapters/parity-trick-cartoon.jpg" alt="The parity magic trick"}

    the only text to translate is ‘The parity magic trick’.

If you are unsure how to translate a line, please leave it for another translator.