Hitchwiki:Hitchgathering/Website translation

''We made the tutorial very detailed so that people that never translated before can access all the tools. If you have experience with translating, in particular with drupal, you can just skim along to the bolded bits''

To translate the website, you need to have an account on hitchgathering.org AND to be listed as a 'translator' on the same website. You can apply for becoming a translator on your profile. An admin will then come back to you.

As a translator, you'll be able to see a "translate" button on top of pretty much all sorts of content on the website. The website is set to display all content in the language of choice if a translation exists, or in English if there is no translation yet. So one way to go about translating, is to browse the website in your language, and every time a piece of text comes up in English, translate it if you feel like it.

Now the most important thing to translate is the navigation menus of the website. There is an orange one right below the website's name, and a very discreet one at the bottom of each page (my account...). And those don't have a "translate" button around them...

Menus
Between two events, the menu structure can change quite a bit. Some menu items are new, some are gone, some stay, but the place they point to is likely to have changed. So, when translating the menu, it's important to go through ALL the menu items, including those that seem to not have changed. Fortunately, there are not many.

Due to a drupal flaw, menu items are not considered part of the interface (and thus translatable with the cute blue bar), neither part of the content (thus translatable like a front page post). So we have to go out of our way a little bit to find how to translate them.

'''First thing to try: While browsing the website in your language, click on the menu item you want to translate. You will land on the page that the menu item is pointing to. That page might have a "translate" button. If you click on that, you'll be able to translate the content of the page, but also the menu item that is associated with it''' (menu settings). So, just delete the English word and replace it with the translation, translate the content too, save, and that's it.

You can arrange the order of the menu items that way: Noticed that, since you're a translator, there's a little black bar above the website? It say's "site building" (among other things). Point to that, and another menu will drop down with "menu", and inside that, "list". Click. You can then choose your menu (primary is the orange one, secondary is the discreet one, don't mind the others) and drag and drop the items into place.

'''But some menu items don't point to a page that has a "translate" button. So we have to go in the admin section of the website to find them.'''
 * Point to "Site building again (in the black bar above), then "translate interface" in the drop-down and inside that "search". Click it.
 * You'll land on an administration page with a couple of options:
 * string contains: enter a word or two as in a search engine to find the menu item you're planning to translate.
 * Langage: leave it.
 * Search in: leave it
 * Limit search to: "menu".
 * Click "search". the website should give you a list of items to translate, one of them being the one you're searching. If not, beware your search keywords. "Item 1" is not the same as "item 1" (capital letters!). Try both.
 * When you found your menu item, click on "edit" (to the right).
 * Add a translation for your language

Yeah, it sucks, but there are only, like 10 menu items, so let's get done with it.

FAQ
Great news! It's super easy: click on one faq and you get a "translate" button. No menu shit, business as usual. Now, you might notice that some FAQ are empty. That's because they are under construction. You can actually submit some, so that you can translate them after. Amazing, ain't it?

Content
Now, that's much more text to translate, but it's the same super easy method than the FAQs. '''Just browse around the site in your language, and anytime you find a post that shows up in english, it means that there is no translation for your language. Go ahead and hit the "translate" button.'''

Interface
Now, that's the icing on the cake.

There are tiny bits of text here and there that the website throws at you to help you find your way. A little "more" link at the bottom of a list, the "new topics" link in the forum... Those are part of Drupal, and yes, we can translate them too.

'''That's the use of the blue bar that you might have noticed on the bottom of every page. If you click the "translate text", the bar will grow and display to you all of them little bits of text that are visible on the page.''' Some of them will be in green (already translated), some in white (to translate). Click on one you want to translate, and you'll get a textbox to enter the translation. Submit, and that's it. The next person that will load the page will get your translation instead.

It's dead easy, and it makes the overall experience of browsing the site feel much more solid. I mean, browsing a website that is in your language, but with tids and bits of English scattered around feels really amateurish.

Now, even better:

Drupal is a participative project, and you can participate quite easily:

If you use the right settings, every translations that you will commit will be sent over to the drupal servers and will join the thousands of translations that drupal stores and distributes. So, not only you'll help translating hitchgathering.org, but you'll help translating ALL other drupal websites. How is that for an impact? Here is how to do it:


 * Go to your profile ("My account" on the secondary menu)
 * Click "edit", scroll down a bit.
 * You'll find a field called "localization client". That's it. Read the short instructions, click the link
 * It'll take you to drupal.org website, where you'll need to create an account.
 * And with that account comes a "Localization Server API key". It's a long string of letters and numbers.
 * Copypaste it to the same place where you found the link to the drupal website ("localization client" on your profile in hitchgathering.org)
 * Save and that's it.

If you go through that, all your subsequent interface translation will be forwarded automatically to drupal, to help them make a better website builder, and God knows they need it...

List of untranslatable stuff
Not translatable YET...

The "countdown" block right under the website name.
 * We'll probably move that when we have enough slogans anyway.