Announcing rust-lang-translations.org

[dalance]

I started a new project to host translated documents of Rust.

https://rust-lang-translations.org/

This project uses mdbook-i18n-helpers to support continuous translation of documentation.
Even if the original documentation is updated, the tool automatically detects the updates and marks any parts that need new translations or translation revisions.

This project also provides configured CI and command line tools for updating documentation, so you can focus on translation rather than introducing mdbook-i18n-helpers individually for each project.

In the future, if this project has enough translations and contributors, we may be able to propose merging it into the official project.

If you are interested in this project, please help us out.

[orzklv]

@dalance, seems very good to me! I need to discuss about it with my localization team.

Also, after doing some review and code surfing, I noticed that you broke everything into sentences and transalte po files. It worth to mention that there are languages like uzbek where sentences has to link up each other via proper structure or was that already covered?

By linking up, I mean, an english sentence can be translated differently depending on the context or next sentence, so a unified translation might not be understandable all the time.

Am I missing something?

[dalance]

@orzklv Thank you for your interesting in my project. I can understand your concern because I'm a native Japanese.

I think this is a trade-off between translation quality and project sustainability. Constructing appropriate text structure without restriction from the original text enables better quality, but it causes difficulty to trace the update of original book.
I saw many translated TRPLs was abandoned after completing the first translation, I think it is natural because checking the update and reflecting it to translation over the years is huge amount and boring work.

Technically, there is a context support of PO file format, but the mdbook plugin using in this project doesn't support it yet google/mdbook-i18n-helpers#184 .
So if you decide to join us, it may be useful to add the context information as comment to use the context feature in future.

This project focuses to automation for project sustainability, even if we compromise quality.
So if you aim to highest quality (e.g. for publishing physical book), this project may not be appropriate.

[orzklv]

Hello @dalance!

I do apologize for taking too long to respond, I just had discussion with my localization team and after hours of talking and explaining how your approach works, we came to final conclusion. Our team has decided to keep doing manual work on translating the book as is and not sacrifice readability for the sake of slang support.

I'm deeply sorry that it worked out that way. Hopefully, we will get to work on other Rust localization projects in the future.

[dalance]

@orzklv
Thank you for your detailed explanation. I'm glad that you have given it such serious consideration.
I think this decision is quite reasonable, as each translator should proceed in the form that is most convenient for them.
If the infrastructure for this project improves in the future and you decide it's appropriate to transition to the project, please join us then.