As written few days ago on Internationalisation of ClassicPress we are working on replicate with a minimal solution a working internationalisation for ClassicPress like WordPress.
And is not easy at all.
At https://translate.classicpress.net/projects/core/ you can see the status of the 11 locales that we want to focus.
Why only 11? Check the other discussion because I explained everything from the decision to workflow.
Today I imported the localization files taken from WP for this languages and right now for 1.0.0 we have 55~ new strings but based on the various rules that every team has in WordPress about localization this can change.
How to localize
We don’t have now the resources to do our translation rules for every locale like WP, so we will follow the various rule that every language community as on https://make.wordpress.org/polyglots/.
For who doesn’t know when there is a localization task is not enough to localize but also follow rules like for the sake of consistency or organization. I explained this with a research made years ago in WP, check the video at Daniele Scasciafratte – Why your community needs a glossary – WordPress.tv
Basically you don’t want that a specific term change the localization from a release to another or a term is localized in a different way in the same tool but is referring to the same thing. This is a problem when you have 52000~ plugins localized in over 100~ locales.
Also locale is not a language because you probably know that languages are different from a country to another or inside the same country and for that reason the real term to use is not language but locale. Take the example of en-us with en-uk or en-ca and so on or the spanish in the South America.
What tool to use
We are using GlotPress that is a WP plugin used in WP.org to ship the languages files for core, plugin and themes.
The instance is avalaible at https://translate.classicpress.net/projects/core/
The UI is not the same of http://translate.wordpress.org/ because we don’t have any resources to work on that right now, also as feature like for locale reviewers.
GP out the box doesn’t have reviewers for locales but only global for all of them. WP.org implemented their plugins and infrastrcture for it that we don’t have yet.
Who will review the localizations?
I am Italian (mamma mia!) and I cannot review localization for example of japanese and also in the founding team we don’t have no that speak that language.
So our idea is to select 11 reviewers, one for every locale that will have this permission that as founding committee thrust.
The ideal plan is to have reviewers that are not part of the committee to be more inclusive and open and at the same time delegate better the various tasks.
We have already got it candides for Polish, Dutch, German, Italian but we need for all the others.
So just write here if you are interested to cover that task also for this locales (Turkish, Spanish (Spain), Portuguese (Brazilian), Russian, French (France), Japanese, English (UK)) and we will let you know.
When everything will start?
Ideally for the official release 1.0.0 we need to cover this locales at 100%. Also if the workflow is working and in the meantime we improve the GP permission system we will add new locales.
Yes we want to cover most as we can for the core but we are starting and we cannot focus in all of them right now while we are defining the infrastructure.
Also I invite everyone interested to join the i18n channel on Slack where you can get the latest updates!
