Multi-language documentation
Opened this issue · 5 comments
I'm going to build a mpcnc primo with my dad next month and translating the docs to him in realtime is not something I'm looking forward to, so I'll probably want to run all the docs through google translate, print that and go from there.
But having the ability to add community-supported translations for the docs would be big imo.
ps. we're dutch
That sounds like a tough challenge for you. I hope the Google translation does alright. It would be pretty difficult technically to support translations. The docs themselves don't get enough attention, and adding translations is going to make that a lot worse.
I would love to help out technically, but I just have to turn down this request because it is going to be so hard to maintain.
That sounds like a tough challenge for you. I hope the Google translation does alright
Not really. But I know it can be a hurdle for many non-native english speakers.
It would be pretty difficult technically to support translations.
Not sure, there are many projects doing this, using something like transifex
it is going to be so hard to maintain.
Idea is to make it 100% community supported/maintained. All that is needed is a infrastructure like transifex to get it going.
The current system uses markdown pages, fed into mkdocs to generate a static web site, which gets loaded into GitHub to be served. I have not used transiflex (have you? Maybe you could help me?) but it looks like it works on the static web site during the mkdocs process. I am not sure how to fit that into the process.
The other trouble I have is understanding how this actually gets maintained. First, we have a lot of docs already. I assume we would want to at least start with an auto translation to get the bulk of the work done.
But Google translate isn't great, as you've pointed out. But I would be surprised if there was a significantly better automated solution.
Then we have the problem of editing the automated translations. I am sure we would get some volunteers (like yourself) that would be able to edit the pages they needed. Maybe some would go further (we have a great community, especially in Europe). We would need to keep all of those edits and somehow apply them to the automated translations.
Then we have the other problem of someone documenting something new, or editing the English language docs. How would we update the other languages? Do we start with a new automated translation? And then apply the known edits from the community? How does that work?
I may just not see the right page with documentation on how transiflex works to solve that. I also don't see any projects successfully keeping translations working on mkdocs without a huge amount of work. I am totally ready to be wrong here.
I would love for that to be an option outside of something like Google Chrome translating the whole page. I only speak one language unfortunately and by your edits that you just made to fix my typos and grammar you can tell I am not all that great at it.