Support for translators

Guidelines for translation

• DO'NT MAK SPELLIGN ERORS! ;)
• Be consistent. Don't use different words for the same thing.
• You can use locale formatters (like %1$s) if you need to change the order for the arguments in strings that take 2 or more arguments (currently only in 1 string), unless otherwise noted.
• Leave the following menu shortcuts untouched:
  • Amiga-Q Quit
  • Amiga-O Open
  • Amiga-P Print
  • Amiga-S Save
  • Amiga-? About
  • Amiga-C Copy
  • Amiga-V Paste
  • Amiga-X Cut
  • Amiga-Z Undo
• Use underscores to mark the hotkey for gadget labels that have a hotkey in the original. Don't define a hotkey for gadgets that didn't have a hotkey.
• Make sure the gadget hotkeys are unique under all circumstances. Especially the settings requester has some common gadgets that must be reachable by hotkey on all settings pages.
• Make the translation user-friendly, i.e. translate English jargon into something understandable. If your language department has a dictionary, use it!
• If your language department has made some guidelines, stick to them!
• Try to avoid too many abbreviations. They make reading harder.
• Always test the translation on a screen with the dimensions 640x256 and with the font TOPAZ/8 to see if some text is too big to be displayed in the windows or on the screen.

Guidelines for proofreading

• Correct all spelling and punctuation mistakes.
• Check thoroughly that the hotkeys are unique for gadgets in every window, i.e. that a hotkey is only used once inside a window.
• If some points in the translation are not consistent, change it to be so.
• Always test the translation on a screen with the dimensions 640x256 and with the font TOPAZ/8 to see if some text is too big to be displayed in the windows or on the screen. If some text is too big, cut it down. Eventually use abbreviations.
• Check that the translation applies to the guidelines set up by your language department.
• Send a list of your corrections to the translator so that he/she will not make the same mistake(s) again.

Translation conditions

• If your translations contain deliberate misinformation, jokes, modified prices, modified licensing conditions, modified email/web addresses, modified copyright texts, your personal opinions, pointers to the translators/proofreaders (other than the usual "translated by..., proofread by..." texts where intended), or any other modifications to the original texts that cannot be considered part of a proper translation, the job will go to another translator/proofreader, and you will be locked-out of ATO.
• You must be willing to translate eventual updates of former translations, and if you cannot do it (not enough time, on vacation, etc.), the job will go to another translator/proofreader.
• You must do your translations with proper translations of technical terms, and you must follow the guidelines set up by your language department.
• Translations/proofreadings should be finished within a reasonable period of time!
• The programmer keeps the complete and sole copyright to the original documents. Original documents are given to ATO under a non-disclosure agreement only for the purpose of translation, and they are only to be distributed by ATO to designated translators and proofreaders. Any other use or distribution of these documents by you is prohibited.
• You agree to grant the programmer an unlimited and exclusive license to distribute, use and modify the translations in any way he/she sees fit, and to create derivative work or have derivative work created by a third party, under the condition that you are still mentioned as co-author in the translations.
• You agree not to use translations themselves in any way, not to grant usage licenses for translations to others, and not to distribute translations to anybody, except to the programmer.

Programs helping translation

Massimiliano Origgi (one of our Italian members) has made a complete environment called Localizer for creating and translating locale files. It has many advanced features, and you can get version 1.0 by clicking here. (Please note that it requires MUI 3.x.)

In case you have found (or created?) a tool which you think would be of help to members of ATO, please mail me about it.

If you only have EMail

For viewing homepages, try sending a mail to "getweb@usa.healthnet.org" with lines like "GET http://ato.vapor.com/ato" in the body (subject is not important). Thanks to Andrija Antonijevic (antony@oreska.dv.co.yu) for this information!

FTP (File Transfer Protocol) will very often be needed when getting an archive that you are to translate. This is perfectly possible via normal EMail too, and the method is called FTPMail. For this, you need to find an FTPMail-server. As an example, we will use ftpmail@ftp.uni-stuttgart.de. You could also use ftpmail@decwrl.dec.com, ftpmail@ieunet.ie, ftpmail@doc.ic.ac.uk or another one you find. The commands that individual servers use differ a little, so you might want to send a mail with "HELP" in the subject or in the body of the mail to get a description of the commands. Anyway, for the beforementioned ftpmail-server, you can send a mail like this:

connect ftp.uni-bremen.de
cd pub/aminet/comm/tcp/
dir
get YAM13.LHA
quit

What this mail does should be pretty straighforward. Some time (hours/days - depends) after sending the mail to the address of the ftpmail-server, you will get two mails back: One containing the directory list of pub/aminet/comm/tcp/ on the FTP-server ftp.uni-bremen.de, and another one containing the UUEncoded archive YAM12.LHA. Of course you can change the mail above to connect to different FTP-servers, access different directories, not to give you a directory listing, not to give you a file, give you a different file etc. etc. etc. Simple as that!