Adding Spanish Language to moodlebox.net website?

StevenM

Hello Nicolas - I started to see if I could prototype adding in the Spanish language for the MoodleBox.net website via a cloned GitHub repo. I made a little progress and learned I needed to
add an assets/lunr.sp.js file. I also struggled searching for files on my windows pc, as .md files don't have their contents searched by default. Anyway, Eric and I are going to work on this.

I was wondering if you might give me just a few pointers, or point me to any documentation.

I've installed hugo on my windows laptop, and am testing out the generation on the local files.

I started by replicating the content/en folder to content/sp and have started translating a few files.

Thanks for any easy tips or references you might be able to provide.

Steve Miley

Nicolas

Hi Steve

I would suggest this maybe easier process, if you do not want to try the "Git" way:

Download and unzip the whole website contents and config here: https://github.com/moodlebox/moodlebox.net/archive/refs/heads/main.zip
Duplicate the content/en folder and rename the copy to content/es(not "sp", since "es" is the correct ISO code for Spanish)
Translate the content of all the md files to spanish without touching the filename. For the header follow the recommendations here: https://github.com/moodlebox/moodlebox.net#what-to-do-with-the-header-of-the-file
Repeat steps 2 and 3 for all folders in data folder
Zip the result (only the content and data folders) and send the compressed file to me

We'll manage the few remaining things (config.php and i18n/es.yaml) later.

Some tips:

I'll manage to find the correct assets/lunr.es.js file
Use Notepad++ or Visual Studio Code to edit markdown files

Thank you for this!

Nicolas

Nicolas I'll manage to find the correct assets/lunr.es.js file

Done.

StevenM

Great, I'll do that; that will make things a lot easier than trying to run hugo, and create a local website. I'll follow strategies from the other languages, such as translating the aliases, as in this example.

title: Soutenir le projet MoodleBox
authors:

Nicolas Martignoni
date: 2018-03-07
lastmod: 2020-04-23
description: Vous pouvez soutenir concrètement le projet MoodleBox en participant aux frais et en augmentant la motivation pour son développement continu
slug: soutenir-le-projet-moodlebox
weight: 100
aliases:
/soutenir
/dons
give
donate
help/soutenir-le-projet-moodlebox

StevenM

Hi - one last question, in the guidelines, it says not to change the categories text,
but in about/index.html in de, fr, I do see it changed (see copy/paste in this message).
Also, I've seen that sometimes
there are aliases in the english files, but not always in the fr, de files. I know I will modify
the slug string. But, I've seen where occasionally, the slug translation will also show up in a
path for an alias.

Should I translate the categories? (what is right of categories: )
should I modify one of the alias lines to match the slug?
File:
content/en/about/index.htm
DE
slug: ueber-uns
weight: 2
categories:
- Über…
  aliases:
- about-us
- about

FR - ** note no aliases
slug: a-propos
weight: 2
categories:

À propos

EN -
slug: about
weight: 2
categories:

About
aliases:
about-us
about

Thanks, Steve

Nicolas

StevenM Should I translate the categories? (what is right of categories: )

These are translated in the i18n/*.yaml files mentioned above. The file i18n/es.yaml is already there, but a few translations are missing.

StevenM Should I modify one of the alias lines to match the slug?

Aliases are not essential. In case of doubt, do not add any alias. They not meant to be the same in all languages. The idea here is that in some languages, people are used to several terms for, e.g. the about page, as here for German, where 2 aliases were added to allow people to find it naturally. You've seen in the French version of the same file that there's no alias.

PS. Aliases are also here when I had to change the deep URL of the page, to keep a link to the old URL, which should not happen any more.

StevenM

I've made some good progress on translating many of the files (I haven't done the news yet),
I used DEEPL.com, thanks for that tip.

I was able to modify some of the files, so I could get HUGO to build the site.
I have a version on a website

http://52.27.119.250/

The things I'm working on right now, are

looking for english words showing up in the translation.
I have a weird problem where many of dropdown links get the url switched
from mb/es to es/mb. For now, I've just replicated those folders. I've fixed
just today (may 12) by just having the baseurl be the top of the webiste, so ignore this issue).
Search doesn't seem to work
** it does now, that I reset the baseurl !
I might have some slugs wrong, some path links that need fixing.
I wonder, but I don't think the screenshots in english need to be redone.
Working on the MoodleBox plugin es language.

After I make a bit more progress, I'll reach out to Eric.

Steve

StevenM

I've got the site http://52.27.119.250/es/ looking pretty good and have sent a note to Eric for a brief look to get a general assessment of translation quality. I was able to get all the words translated. I will add a few notes on my process here for future translations.

Copying content/en to content/newlanguage to start.
Edit all those files, and
files in data
config/_default/config.yml - add section for newlanguage and put in translations
Add file i18n/newlanguage.yaml and add any missing strings / translations in that file.
add a lunr.(newlanguage).js in assets/js

If you use hugo, it doesn't really work well generating files on a local computer folder system, it works much better if you can put the files at the base of a webserver. I put the files in a subfolder on a web server, but there were a number of problems with absolute file references such as fonts, and search.
I ran hugo and it created a "public" folder, I'd then scp all those files to my webserver at the top-level folder "/var/www/html".

Using Deepl.com for translations worked really well, it would offer alternative translations at a time.
My workflow was -
Edit the file in Notepad++ on windows
select a contiguous area of text to translate
copy
paste into deepl translation
audit translation for any markup language problems
click the copy icon in deepl
select the title frame in Notepad++ and paste
** this is key for efficiency, since that text was already selected, it overrights what you selected.
continue in byte size chunks repeating this process.
After a while, you'll see how big a selection you can make, depending upon the markup in the text

quirks -
** I ran into some issues where if there was a numbered list, it would repeat some numbers, like 4. 4.
** I also ran into problems where I'd lose an occasional [ or ' in the markup language, but not that often.
** generally, if i copy and pasted text that include a HTML URL, it would only translate the title or alt, which was really great, but once it converted a filename link to an image, that had end that was something_en.png to something_es.png, but that was only once or twice.
** when some of the link targets/footnotes weren't numbers, but text, they would get translated also which I'd have to fix. [description][link footnote] ; But, probably 90% of the link footnotes are numbered and those all translated properly.

danmcguire

StevenM I think the Spanish version looks good, but then, I'm only a very beginner in being able to read Spanish.

StevenM

I finished all the news article translations. I also found that if using the deepl app, there are accelerator keys to grab text from notepad++ and send the text directly back to notepad++. making each file translation easier, faster and less prone to errors in copy/paste! Eric did a pass at the quality and gave me a few changes to make. I have sent an email to him asking his thoughts on getting another pass to review.

http://52.27.119.250/es/

ralfkrause

StevenM Which steps should be done next? We should get the Spanish translation to the main MoodleBox address https://moodlebox.net/es/

Nicolas, how would it be possible to do this? What will happen with a new article which exists only in French, English and German? Will the article be shown in English automatically if there is no Spanish translation?

Ralf

Nicolas

@StevenM and other Spanish-speaking people have made a lot work to translate the current complete documentation into Spanish. QA of this translation is currently in progress, and it is expected that I get the whole translated files in early august. I'll then have to integrate them in the website, which will follow shortly afterwards.

ralfkrause We should get the Spanish translation to the main MoodleBox address https://moodlebox.net/es/.

Yes

Regarding your question about documents not yet available in any other languages: thanks to Hugo, the software I use to manage and publish the web site, I've implemented a way to show the English version of web pages that aren't translated yet.

For those interested, this works using so called "Vertical merging of content mounts" Hugo feature. See this Git commit.

StevenM

Hello - Eric has proofed the Spanish version that I had translated manually
with DEEPL; there were a small number of errors in links and quite a few minor
changes in some words. Sometimes the translation or my copy-paste stripped out
the beginning [ in the link description, sometimes, DEEPL would translate the link target,
but not the target at the bottom of the file.

The website with the changes is at - http://52.27.119.250/

I will add Eric and myself as additional authors on the Spanish files, then package up the git source.

Nicolas - how would you like me to send you a zip/tar compressed file with the new files?

I believe this is the list of files -
tar -cvf es_files.tar i18n/es.yaml config/_default data/*/es content/es

Where you'd merge the content on the config/_default/config.yml

Nicolas

StevenM Eric has proofed the Spanish version that I had translated manually

Wonderful! 🙏

StevenM Nicolas - how would you like me to send you a zip/tar compressed file with the new files?

Just send me via e-mail a zip or tarred file of your source and I'll manage the remaining of the process.

Nicolas

The spanish translation of the MoodleBox web site is now published.

A big thank you to Steve and Eric 🙏

StevenM

A side note on the workflow in case another language gets added in a similar way.

I used DEEPL.com (paid subscription to support the service) for the initial translation.
I used HUGO to generate the pages from the source and copied them to a "development website" I had on AWS.
Eric then reviewed all the key documents and the most recent news.

Eric suggested we use https://hypothes.is/ as a mechanism to collaborate on the translation,
which we did, and it worked well. We created a hypothesis group to associate the annotations.

StevenM

Hello - One of the things Eric had brought up is how to get the ES.MX or ES international language pack on a MoodleBox, and whether one should be included in future distributions. I know a user can download any language packs to an Internet connected MoodleBox, and with a little difficulty, do it manually

Could a future distribution include the ES language pack?
Should we create a language file for the MoodleBox plugin tool strings for Spanish?
When I look at the MoodleBox Plugin github repo, I don't see the language file for the french, german MoodleBox plugin strings, but I believe they exist, am I missing where they are stored?

Thanks, not meaning to add any work, but commenting on a few other things that might be good to do.

Steve

Nicolas

StevenM Could a future distribution include the ES language pack?

Yes, indeed, this is easy and it will just add a bit weight to the MoodleBox image.

StevenM Should we create a language file for the MoodleBox plugin tool strings for Spanish?

No, the translation is made within AMOS: https://lang.moodle.org/, just like with any Moodle plugin (see this documentation for the exact process). It seems that the "es" package translation is not complete (5 strings missing) with a few outdated strings, and "es_mx" has also a few outdated translations. It would be easy for a Spanish speaking person to complete either lang pack.

StevenM When I look at the MoodleBox Plugin github repo, I don't see the language file for the french, german MoodleBox plugin strings, but I believe they exist, am I missing where they are stored?

This is normal (see above): as stated in the documentation, "The plugin itself should ship with English strings only." The translated strings are stored in the AMOS repository.

ralfkrause

The problem with the outdated language packs a problem made by Moodle itself.

When a plugin programmer uploads his new plugin version into the Moodle plugin directory then no translator will get a message. I am a maintainer for the german language packages (de, de_du, de_kids) and I am searching active for new versions of my favourite plugins. So I did not get an automated notice that the upgrades MoodleBox plugin 2.16.0 comes with 4 new strings. So if a translator does not administrate a platform or does not use a specific plugin himself the he will not notice new plugin versions with outdated and missing strings.

Nicolas

ralfkrause When a plugin programmer uploads his new plugin version into the Moodle plugin directory then no translator will get a message.

Yes, you're right. But IMHO this is perfectly OK and not an issue, since the translation is a community thing. Even if I maintain the french packages (fr, fr_ca), I would not like at all to be spammed by notices every time a plugin gets a string update. Anyway, if this was on option in AMOS, it would solve your issue (and mine 🙂). I would suggest to open an MDLSITE issue and to discuss about it on the moodle.org forums.

ralfkrause

I think that a lot of the Spanish strings for the MoodleBox plugin are coming from German Valero gvalero@unam.mx. He translated the strings for the language pack es_mx.