Translate ClassicPress to Arabic

Hi there!
I’m Anass, and I want to be part of classipress providing my knowledge to translate it into Arabic.
Is it possible?
Have a nice day!

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Welcome to ClassicPress, @Anass !

I am tagging @ElisabettaCarrara as the person who can tell you the steps involved.

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Thank you Tim!
Should I create another new topic and tag her please?

No, she’ll get my tag. It’s the weekend; give her a few days!

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Of course. Thanks a lot Tim!
I’ll wait patiently. :slight_smile:

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Sorry for the delay, I also was in the middle of changing the internet connection provider.

Expect a message from me later today @Anass, and welcome onboard!

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@MattyRob Arabic needs to be added to the locales in Crowdin - I already sent an invite to join to @Anass so let us know when he is good to go. Thanks!

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@Anass @ElisabettaCarrara - Arabic language is now an option on CrownIn.

Thanks for your contribution.

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Thanks Matt!
I see that it says something like ar/SA.
Is there any option to be a general arabic scoop, instead of a specific region? because I think it refers to Saudi Arabia country. If is possible convert it to a more generic ar or ar/AR.

Hmm, I selected “Arabic” in the available options:

Would you like me to try one of the other options?

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I think it will be the best choice “Arabic”, because it’s more global and “inclusive”.

I tested adding the Arabic, Saudia Arabia option and it shares the same code. @ElisabettaCarrara Perhaps something we should raise with CrowdIn? Or am I missing something obvious? I’ve tried adding a custom language code but it seems that made no difference.

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Arabic like many languages around the word has “flavours” - for example Algerian is Arabic as well as Saudi Arabic with some peculiar differences between them.
This mean Crowdin might not list all of them. We could ask them to revise that and that should be enough for them to add what we need.
One thing I want to point out is that as far as localization is concerned one should localize in their own flavour rather than aiming to localize in the generic version that is the base of all flavours, unless they have specific experience with that (it’s a general rule of thumb translators adopt because humans tend to be subjective to their own language no matter what they do to avoid that).

I’ll try to explain an important point about the Arabic language. When it comes to writing, there is only one Arabic language, meaning that all Arabic-speaking countries use the exact same language in written form. In Morocco, we study and write in Standard (Modern) Arabic, but we communicate daily in a dialect, which is more or less similar to those spoken in other Maghreb countries (Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, Mauritania).

The same phenomenon occurs in other Arabic-speaking regions, like the Gulf and Levantine countries—they study the same Standard Arabic that we do in Morocco. All media, TV channels, books, official documents, traffic signs, software, and computer content in Arabic is written in Standard or Modern Arabic.

Dialects are only used in spoken communication, never in writing. Because of this, I suggest creating a generic or global Arabic repository containing all translations in Standard Arabic. If anyone wants to add a local dialect translation, they could, but this is unlikely, as it would appear quite unusual and out of place. Almost all Arabic speakers (likely around 98%) would avoid using their dialect for creating content aimed at a broader Arabic-speaking audience, as it would seem overly localized and exclusive—even for other Arabic speakers.
I’ll hope is less or more clear now.
Thank you for collaborate.

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It seems this issue has been reported to CrowdIn before:

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@MattyRob Would it be possible for us to clone completed AR/SA translation files with some sort of script so that ClassicPress would then offer both AR/SA and AR/AR (though they would actually be the same)?

That way we can still use CrowdIn but also get the translation in the correct locale.

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The process for creating the language pack downloads and the API endpoint is pretty manual with some scripting support, so we can basically do whatever we want.

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