Group Be Welcome Translators

Intro

BeWelcome is useable in many languages. It is translated by the members themselves from all around the world. Every BeWelcome member is encouraged to join the team. All it takes is:

• You should be able to understand English (that's our reference language. For now...)
• You should be able to write without too many mistakes in your mother tongue.

Application

All you need to do is join this group and post in the hello I'm new! thread. You can also get in touch directly with one of those:

Irinka: http://www.bewelcome.org/people/irinka

Julien: http://www.bewelcome.org/people/sitarane

They can give you the access to the translation tool.

How it works

If you're a new translator and you want to skip the looong explanations that follow, simply look at the bottom of the page, and you'll see three new buttons: browse, translate, edit. Now you can play.

First, you can only translate when you're logged in. To log it, go to the www.bewelcome.org page, enter your username and password and click on the "login" button. If you don't have a bewelcome account you must create one.

As a translator, use the site in your language of speciality. To switch from the default "English" to your language, go to the bottom of any page of the site. There is a list of languages. If your language is not listed there, it means that the admins have not created it successfully. You can post on this group about it.

When you are a BeWelcome translator, after you log in to your account, there will be three new links at the bottom of all pages: "browse", "translate" and "edit". If you don't see those links it means that the admins have not given you the correct access rights. You can post about it on this group.

So, what do those buttons do?

Browse

This one shows you the site just how it would look if you were NOT a translator.

Translate

This one makes little purple tag appear near anything that needs to be translated. Typically, if a new feature was recently programmed, it will be only in english and those little purple tags will be everywhere.

Also, if something is already translated, but someone edits the english version, then the phrase will get a little blue tag.

Edit

This one makes a little tag appear near EVERY phrase on the page. It makes it really crowded! That's in case you see a phrase on the website that is already translated, but you would like to put a better translation instead. Then you click on edit and a little green tag should appear near that word, along with all the other words of the page.

Ok, I clicked the tag. What then?

Well, clicking a tag should pop up a new tab or window in your web browser. The new tab, or window, will have the following fields:

• Code: That tells you the unique name of that phrase in our database. It's usually a very unattractive title like "groups_welcomeMessage". It's unattractive for a reason: Don't touch it
• Description: That's a description of the word (no! really?), what this word is supposed to mean.
• English source: That tells you the english version of the word.
• Translation: That's where you write the translation for that word. The field looks big (if you're translating a short phrase, as it is in 90% of the cases). But sometimes (10% of the cases as you've probably already calculated), we need to translate a long phrase. When we translate the Terms of Use or the Frequently Asked Questions or something fleshy like that.
• Languages: That's the language you're using. If you are a translator for more than one language, be careful with this one. Don't post turkish words to the japanese version

Use the "submit" button to complete a translation. The "find" button is only when you're looking for a phrase.

Is there a way to find the stuff that still has to be translated?

There is a way to see all the translatable content: Volunteer tab -> AdminWord -> All in yourlanguage* (on the right of the page, in the "Action" column).

It can be used when you want to translate a part of the websiste that is only accessible to unlogged visitors (ctrl + f to find the text you want to edit or translate).

Where to start

Well, the first place to check if everything is translated is:

The start page from where you can access the tour too.

The signup page

Those two pages are never visited by logged in members and receive less translator update than the rest of the site. On another hand, they are the first thing our users see. So, top priority.

Info for team coordinator

How to enable a new language?

• go to the "AdminWord" page
• find the code "WelcomeToSignup"
• In the language field, type in the ISO 639-1 short code for the language. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ISO_639-1_codes
• Fill out the translation field in the respective language (you probably need to ask the translator or google)
• submit

Now you should see the new language in the footer.