Evaluate changing the translation system

[Kebap]

Brief summary of issue / Description of requested feature:

Evaluate Crowdin platform and alternatives

History / Current status of translation system

1. Mudlet project has started i18n & l10n over 2 years ago
2. Mudlet team chose Crowdin after some testing of systems
3. Mudlet application texts have been condensed in Qt .ts files
4. Translators have arrived and started working in the system
5. Mudlet lua texts are being integrated, Mudlet website tba

Expected result of evaluation

Translators happy & able to work on Mudlet translations in best central system.

Extra information, such as ideas for how to solve / implement:

@comradekingu
Thanks for bringing up the licensing issue! I have not heard this argument before.
Can you elaborate here, please.

• Why lackluster tool?
• Why Weblate?
• More info?

See the link above for the original decision for Crowdin. We also tested Weblate alongside Transifex and other systems, but not in too much detail.

We had some discussion and issues with Crowdin features during last months and years, most are gathered with the "i18n & l10n" tag here on Github. (But the tag lists other issues and feature requests as well)
While Crowdin team was mostly swift to respond, the response's content was not always too helpful.
They are closed source and we must ask for their development time. Not sure if open source project could honor our needs better, unless we find Python programmers ourselves.

Some examples come to my mind spontaneously

• Here is a feature request they found interesting and wanted to forward to developers, but it hasn't been coded, yet Crowdin - group strings by context #1921
• There have been struggles with removing test translations from Taiwanese but can't be done due to translation memory Create zh_tw texts from zh_cn #2642
• There were issues with loosing translations on the smallest update, as well as Crowdin TM adding weird syntax to HTML tags Stop losing translations when modifying #1961
• Some HTML tags and other syntax is mangled in Crowdin as well, for example all apostrophes are unreadable, but they're part of normal English words.

Prior to this issue, discussion of Weblate was spread across several unrelated issues. They are quoted for reference:

Here: Mudlet/mudlet-package-repo#35

@comradekingu

I really dislike that Crowdin dual-licenses my work into their closed source TM, and that it utilizes tracking and profiling. It is also a lackluster tool. Use Weblate instead.

And there: #3761

@comradekingu

Why not move to Weblate instead? Mudlet has zero translations with coverage in two years of being on Crowdin.

@vadi2

Are you certain you're looking in the right place? We have tons of translations in Crowdin and many languages are at 95+%:

Weblate was available at the time we picked Crowdin, but back then it was not good enough. Crowdin itself is working out pretty well!

@comradekingu

I am looking at https://crowdin.com/project/mudlet
Granted, the point remains to change now.

See also

Weblate project:

• https://weblate.org/
• https://github.com/WeblateOrg/weblate

[comradekingu]

@Kebap

Why lackluster tool?

It only has a side-to-side editor, and things get held up in their moronic voting system over needing more than +1 vote to be changed.

Why Weblate?

Weblate, as of 2020, is a much better tool with all sorts of helping views and info/context/functionality for translators, direct linking to strings, adaptable and most importantly is libre software with a much greater community and a whole lot more activity.
Crowdin fails to show the translation for even English, for anything but the string viewed, and results are paged. That is infuriating. Weblate obviously has configurable help-languages in the non-paged Zen, and a tab for all languages in the regular editor.

More info?
https://weblate.org/hosting/ apply here. Crowdin OTOH isn't gratis for libre software, only for non-commercial libre software, (which Mudlet isn't) and Weblate does not require projects to contribute to the TM. The Weblate TM is obviously not closed.

Issues mentioned above

Source context is added automatically. A string context can be added additionally, along with screenshots, variants, etc. There are lots of sorting methods for strings now.

[vadi2]

Is this still desired?

[comradekingu]

@vadi2, Yes, can't contribute if it is on Crowdin.

[vadi2]

Alright - I'm afraid we can't change the translation infrastructure just for you, and Crowdin does work quite well for us. That said if someone is interested in doing the work moving the infrastructure over to a better platform should one exist, I'm happy to consider it 👍