Interactive Multiligual: Crowdsourcing translations with Tiki
by ricks99 in Tiki Wiki CMS Groupware
Interactive Multiligual: Crowdsourcing translations with Tiki
Many times, software internationalization (often abbreviated as <b>i18n</b>) and translation can quickly become a nightmare... if you don't have the right tools. Tiki's interactive translation feature allows contributors to create, edit, and maintain the more than 40 translations of Tiki Wiki CMS Groupware.
In true "dog-fooding" tradition, the Tiki Community began crowd-sourcing this feature in 2010 by establishing a dedicated Tiki instance for translators. Not only can contributors translate via their browser, but Tiki's interactive translation feature allows textual translations <i>within context</i>. The centralized translation server, running the latest Tiki code, ensures that all translators are using the same version. The translation strings are regularly committed to the Tiki SVN repository.
<img src="http://tiki.org/display243" width="450" alt="Tiki translation" longdesc="Translating the LOGOUT button to French" />
Due to its ease of use, the Tiki Community recently completed two translation sprints, pushing the German and French languages towards 100% completion. With more than 45 active translator accounts, other languages are not far behind.
"The on-screen process is very easy for non-techies," says Rodrigo Sampaio Primo. "They can quickly and easily make corrections without having to dig through the PHP code."
"It makes it easy to participate," adds Torsten Fabricius. "With the interactive translation feature, I'm able to contribute and give back to the Tiki community... without needing an extensive coding background."
During FOSDEM 2011 (February 5-6 in Brussels, Belgium), the process was demonstrated for meeting attendees and all were impressed by the process. This video, by Philippe Back, shows how easy and efficient Tiki's interactive translation really is: <embed src="http://blip.tv/play/AYKw5xsC" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="480" height="390" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true"></embed>
<a href="http://blip.tv/dashboard/episode/4993847">Watch the video on BlipTV.</a>
For more information on the Tiki translation server, visit http://i18n.tiki.org.
About Tiki Tiki Wiki CMS Groupware is a full-featured, web-based, multilingual (35+ languages), tightly integrated, all-in-one Wiki+CMS+Groupware, Free Source Software (GNU/LGPL), using PHP, MySQL, Zend Framework, jQuery, and Smarty. Actively developed by a very large international community, Tiki can be used to create all kinds of Web applications, saites, portals, knowledge bases, intranets, and extranets. Tiki is managed by the Tiki Software Community Association. For more information, visit http://tiki.org.
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