Localizing Gallery 3
Gallery 3 is internationalized. Instead of containing language specific
text messages, it tracks text in a special way so that it can be
extracted and translated into other languages. Users will see a
version of the text that has been converted into their own language.
In order for the users to see a localized version of Gallery's text,
somebody must first translate the text messages that Gallery is going
to display. This process is called "localization".
Gallery 3 has a built-in user interface to add your translations. To translate in Gallery 3, do the following:
- Browse to "Admin" > "Settings" > "Language" and activate the language you want to translate to.
- If the target translation isn't the default language for your Gallery, go to your user settings and make the new language your account's preferred language.
- Now enable the translation mode by clicking on "Admin" > "Settings" > "Start translating"
- At the bottom right, click on "Translate" to show the translation interface
- Now you can browse around in your Gallery, select a message in the lower left and enter the translation in the lower right.
Sharing Your Translations
Translating is a lot of work. Luckily you don't have to do it all yourself. If we all share our own translations, we all only have to do a fraction of the work. Please share your translations! To share (= upload) your translations, do the following:
- As a one time configuration step, "Admin" > "Settings" > "Language" and follow the instructions at the bottom of the page to get a translation API key.
- Once configured, all you have to do is click the "Share" button on the same page to upload your translations to the translation server.
Notes
- All your translations are stored in a single database table ("outgoing_translations") on your own Gallery server.
- It's recommended that you create a backup of this table if you've spent a lot of time adding your own translations. Else all the work might be gone if something bad happens to the server or to the Gallery installation.
- The translation server is a database to share translations with other Gallery users, and it's located at gallery.menalto.com.
- There are multiple reasons why your translation submission to the translation server might not be accepted immediately
- If there is an existing translation for the same message and the same language, and you submit a new (better?) translation, the newer translation wins. But if the existing translation received more votes, it's still the default translation for this message.
- If your translation contains HTML elements (e.g. <a>Click me</a>), then it is only immediately activated if the HTML is part of the small subset of valid HTML that is allowed in Gallery 3 translation messages.
Style Guide
- Translations should have the same placeholders as the source message (e.g. %author)
- Translations can only contain a specific subset of HTML (see below)
- Translations must be well formed HTML (e.g. all HTML elements must be closed)
- All HTML element attributes must use double-quotes as value delimiter. Single-quotes are not allowed as delimiter.
Allowed HTML
- a (link anchor) element
- allowed attributes: class, href.
- Allowed values for href: a placeholder (e.g. %url) or "#"
- And <a %attr>Click me</a> is allowed as well (using %attr as a placeholder for various element attributes, as defined by the source message)
- b, i, em, strong (no attributes allowed)