Help
Lost? Hopefully this page helps you out. If not, send a mail to the translator discussion mailing list at [email protected].
How do I translate?
That's very easy. Just select the language of your choice from the index page and click the big "translate" button. You are automatically forwarded to a random, untranslated messsage and can add your own translation by entering the translation into the input area and click the “next” button.
Please keep in mind that you can't “change” translations, just add a new version if you think the old one doesn't sound that good. The best translation is selected by voting for it with the +/- button next to the vote counter. By submitting a new translation you automatically vote for it.
Message, Translations. What's what?
On the PCTP you are confronted with three often recurring terms:
- catalog is one language. There is a catalog for German, French, Russian and others. All the translations you create are associated with a catalog.
- messages are the original (English) sources for your translations.
- translations are messages translated into another language such as German.
I voted for a translation but nothing happened!
You can only vote for a translation one time. If you have voted the same in the past already on that translation, nothing will happen
What are those yellow translations?
These yellow translations are fuzzy translation. Every once in a while we have to change or delete the original, English strings in Plurk. Every time this happens and the system can figure out what string changed, the old translations for this string are marked as fuzzy. That means they are no longer in use but exist to aid the translations to come up with new translations.
I'm lost, how do I translate plural messages?
Some languages have more complex pluralization rules than English, others have easier pluralization rules. For example Japanese doesn't know the concept of plural messages which means that even though the original message has two forms (singular and plural) there is only one input box for plural messages.
However unfortunately the opposite is true too. Russian for example has three different forms and the rule is more complex. The first form is for every number ending in 1, the second for every number ending in 2, 3, 4 and the third form for the rest.
If you are confused please ask on the translator mailing list.
A message I was translating disappeared!
When we update the plurk sources it can happen that we have to remove and add new source messages. After such an update the system will try to check if messages just changed or if they completely disappeared. If a message was changed it's marked as fuzzy so that it can be used as basis for a new translation, if it disappeared all the translations for this string including the comments are deleted too.