Hi,

can somebody please elaborate on the current status of the german translation of Drupal?
There is no de/ directory in the translations/ directory of the contrib CVS.

I found partly-done translations here and here as well as a Drupal installation with locale access to anonymous with a partly done translation here.
Besides there's a ./sandbox/killes/de.po file in CVS.

What is the status of each of these translations?

Does anyone mind if I just create a de/ directory in translations/, fill it with template files from drupal-pot/ and start translating? Everyone is invited to merge in their already translated strings, of course.

Uwe.

Comments

killes@www.drop.org’s picture

Go ahead. You can also create a project for hte translation.
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Uwe Hermann’s picture

Done. The project for the German translation can now be found at
http://drupal.org/node/11326.

Everyone is invited to file issues and attach translated *.po files, if you don't have CVS access.

Uwe.
--
My Drupal site: http://www.crazy-hacks.org
Soon to be drupalized: http://www.unmaintained-free-software.org

Ralf Saalmueller’s picture

I'm not quit shure. Is the german translation done? Or have you set up a new project?

I have the partly translated kloeschen file with drupal 4.4. My point of view is, that you need to translate special terms of drupal, i.e. node, into a common german word that does work. If you leave it in english, the translation wouldn't be complete.

But I do unterstand that this is a bad thing for admins, who have to work with the english terms. My humble opinion is that it's best to do both. Translate it into a german word that transport the meaning of the english term but add the original english term in any form. i.e. Beitrag (node).

orlandooo’s picture

I could contribute a partial translation as well. Can I send the strings as CSV?

Zuperfly’s picture

Trying to import Uwe's new german po-files from the CVS, nearly everytime I get the message: "Translation file broken: plural formula couldn't get parsed." Any ideas? Aren't these po-files fully translated? Aren't these files suitable for Drupal 4.5rc?

killes@www.drop.org’s picture

Only the files that Uwe worked on will have the correct plural formula. Currently these are common-inc.po and general.po.
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Uwe Hermann’s picture

That's right. I fixed this in CVS now (added the correct plural formula to all *.po files) to remove the error.

Please note, that most of the files are not yet translated, even though you can import them now.

Uwe.
--
My Drupal site: http://www.crazy-hacks.org
Soon to be drupalized: http://www.unmaintained-free-software.org

Zuperfly’s picture

Thanks for the quick answers. Last night I started translating some files by myself, I began with user.po and profile.po. It's not that hard with poEdit. And I mainly translated all the "frontend" strings, as for me the "backend" strings don't have to be translated to german.

Ben Burner’s picture

I have not found a way to post my language file (yet, maybe I'm still too sleepy).
My translation is at 452/2079 (21.74%) and is focused on what the user can see (using 'du'). In the next days I will continue the translation and upload the new language file and leave a message here then.
The language file can be found here: http://eviltwins.de/files/languages/de/de.po
Hope it helps.

Ben Burner’s picture

I have the weekend spare and would like to finish the translation, but using a text editor doesn't seem to be the tool to go for.
Is anyone aware of an OS X-tool to do that? I checked Version Tracker but haven't found anything yet.

Ben Burner’s picture

Another thing I may need to mention: the translation file just seems to be to big for drupal. Either you split it up (don't forget that each .po-file needs to have a header) or you find a way to import the file at once ;)

carnivore’s picture

I dont really know if it's really a problem, but there is one strange line in it... I tried to import it a few times without any successful results... then I asked Ben what it could be... then he answered, the file could be too long, so I splitted it in 2 parts... the first part worked very fine, but the second didn't...
So I splited the second one again and again until I found this lines:

#: /?q=admin/modules&PHPSESSID=d5b4102a02501ae299d4d472c602fbe3
msgid ""
msgstr ""

they are just below the translations of the language names...

well I just deleted those 3 lines and then it worked fine...

as already said, I'm a newbie and I don't really know wether it's an error or not...

but it maybe helps those who ask themselves why the heck it doesn't work.

greets!

carnivore.

killes@www.drop.org’s picture

This line isn't included in the official po file.

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killes@www.drop.org’s picture

Why do you say that the file is too big? Do you get timeout problems?

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carnivore’s picture

no no, ben probably just thought that could be the problem. well that helped me find that 3 lines...

deleting them seems to fix the problem...

carnivore.

Zuperfly’s picture

Today I imported the latest german.po file and had to find out that "Syndication" was translated "Bund" and "Recent comments" "Kommentare löschen" (which IS a huge difference).

So no offense but be careful with your transaltions! Others might want to use it and it's enough work to manually translate the english strings. No need to re-translate the imported german ones.

Zuperfly

Uwe Hermann’s picture

I fixed this in CVS, thanks for reporting. I'm not sure how to properly translate "Syndicate" at the moment, so I removed it for now.

As this case shows we probably should arrange some sort of proof reading or quality assurance measures for all translations to prevent errors or wrong translations... I think I'll create an extra forum topic for this, soon.

In the mean time: Everyone who's german, please check the translations and report any typos, errors or misleading translations to help improve the quality of the translation.

TIA, Uwe.
--
My Drupal site: http://www.crazy-hacks.org
Soon to be drupalized: http://www.unmaintained-free-software.org

Zuperfly’s picture

There are also often errors regarding the german Umlaute (ä,ö,ü), sometimes they are displayed as "?". This only happens if you import po-files, if you manage the strings manually, everything is fine.

I think terms like "Syndicate" should be kept in their original (english) form. Everyone knows what it means (like "Internet" or "E-Mail") and any german translation would just confuse people.

By the way, is there any chance to export only parts of the german.po from poEdit? I translated the buddylist module in my german.po file but I can only export the whole file again. It would be nice to just export the buddylist parts of it.

Zuperfly

killes@www.drop.org’s picture

Broken umlauts are a clear sign of a PO file that has iso-8859-1 umlauts, not utf-8 ones. Drupal requires utf-8.

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Zuperfly’s picture

I also found that "node" was translated "Knoten". This may be right in theory, but - how many german users of a Drupal powered site will know what "Knoten" means? And by "users" I don't mean administrators. Keep it simple. Keep the users in mind. Usability starts with wording.

I'll use "Beitrag" for "node" and "Artikel" for "story".

Zuperfly

Dries’s picture

It is a matter of communication. If the (German) translators can communicate easily, these issues are easy to deal with.

First, the bug tracker, combined with the translator guide, should allow you to communicate with each other. While it works, we realize this might not be the most efficient/intuitive communication environment for novice users. Therefore, we plan to make it possible to categorize forum topics by project using a new project vocabulary. That means, we can create you a German translation project forum that is orthogonal to the existing Translators forum. Furthermore, it means that people can post a forum topic to the Installation problems forum and to the German translation project forum at the same time, and that the German translation team can put a 'filter' on the installation problems.

Second, maybe the translator guide should be extended with language-specific guidelines so people don't have to read up on all past topics/issues to understand what is going on.

All projects would benefit from better communication, not just the translation projects, or the German translation project in particular. As such, it might still be a good idea to invoke a fresh discussion about this, and to gather additional suggestions/perspectives before we go ahead an implement these suggested changes.

nilfilter’s picture

Hello,

I recently installed Drupal 4.5.0 and while tinkering I have translated a few hundred strings into German.
I am however somewhat insecure about its status: After importing the updated .po file, Drupal's status says 801/1717 (46.65%). I am using kbabel for the translation, its current status is 801/1474, i.e. its total strings count is 243 less than Drupal's. Besides, there are some English strings in the interface that I do not find in the German .po (4.5.0, 20/10/2004 - 15:06).
So, how comes the number of strings differ?

I haven't yet uploaded the translation as I am currently adding strings every day.

Cheers

killes@www.drop.org’s picture

Drupal also takes the strings in contrib modules sinto consideration. those are not included in the drupal.po file.
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nilfilter’s picture

"Drupal also takes the strings in contrib modules sinto consideration. those are not included in the drupal.po file."
Ok, thanks.

I did upload the updated .po file as a task:
http://drupal.org/node/12759

Was that a particularly ignorant thing to do?