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Getting involved as a Translator

The translation of texts that are visible in the UI of InvenioRDM is integrated with the Transifex platform.

Trust-chain approval

Access requests are approved once a current translator / partner vouches for you in Discord #rdm-translations.

If you wish to contribute by translating your desired language, please follow these steps:

Step 1 - Get a Transifex account

Sign up for a free Open Source Transifex account at https://www.transifex.com/signup/open-source/ (any other Transifex account will do as well).

For more details, check out the Transifex Getting Started Guide.

Step 2 - Join the inveniosoftware team

  1. Introduce yourself on Discord first

    Post your Transifex username and target language(s) in Discord #rdm-translations. A member of the team will confirm they can vouch for you.

  2. Ask to join the inveniosoftware team: https://www.transifex.com/inveniosoftware/invenio/dashboard/.

    Your request will be accepted once the Discord step above is complete.

For more details, check out the “Joining a translation team” section of the Transifex guide.

Step 3 - Find your language

Check for the existing languages.

  • If your desired language is not on the list, click Request language and search for the language you need. transifex request language – Ping the team again on Discord so they can approve the request.
  • If your desired language already exists, choose the language and click Join team. transifex join team

Step 4 - Learn about your translation team

  • Check with the InvenioRDM translation team via Discord #rdm-translations
    • to get sorted within your language team.
    • to find out whether you need the reviewer status.

Step 5 - Get familiar with Transifex

Step 6 - Check out workflows, experiences and advices

There are some workflows to be aware of and we collected some advice and experiences that you might find useful:

  • Every change you make should be reviewed by another member of your language team. You might need to press the Unreview button after changing a reviewed item.
  • For each item you translate/review you can add comments including mentioning other members using @name.
  • Several words/sentences appear in different places and packages. To create consistency, try to use the same translations. You might find the transifex-inveniosoftware-Search Strings and its filters helpful. transifex search strings
  • Gender-neutral language: if the language you are translating uses different words for male, female, etc.
    • try to use a neutral way.
    • try to stick to one translation style.
  • Sometimes it is hard to translate a sentence without seeing its context. If you cannot find it in the InvenioRDM UI (e.g., in the InvenioRDM-demo) contact the InvenioRDM translation team in Discord #rdm-translations. They can point you and show you some tricks.

Submitting Translations for Pages Outside Transifex

For certain static pages, like help pages, translating directly via Transifex is impractical due to the extensive use of _() functions required for each string. For these specific cases, we use language-specific HTML files (e.g., page.sv.html for Swedish or page.de.html for German) for these static content-heavy pages.

If you are working on translations for these static pages, submit your translations as Pull Requests directly to invenio-app-rdm on GitHub. Here is a full list of pages that are translated this way:

Once your Pull Request is merged, the changes will be reflected in the next release of InvenioRDM.

Troubleshooting

If you have any questions or suggestions, reach out to the InvenioRDM translation team via Discord #rdm-translations.