Best Practices for Translation

1. Translate the latest versions

In some projects we still hold previous versions in folders with the publication date of that version. Except for rare circumstances these don’t need translating. Sometimes we provide also a folder with an upcoming version, you may want to translate those once the current version is finished, so that a after a new release most or all of the changes are already translated. 

2. Take a look at the glossary

Before you start translating documents, please make sure the Crowdin glossary is translated. The glossary is a dictionary for important words that should have a consistent translation throughout all the S3 resources, so it may take some time to identify appropriate terms in your language. For the S3 Practical Guide the glossary contains all the pattern names, and the names of important concepts like “pattern”, “driver”, “domain”, “value” etc. Contact us if you have any questions about terms in the glossary, and we will try to help as best we can. In the S3 Practical guide, there’s two files named glossary. One is called Glossary, this is the glossary Crowdin uses to suggest translations of glossary terms to translators, the other is called glossary.yaml, this contains the translations of the definitions of glossary terms used in the practical guide itself. The Crowdin glossary is the one you want to translate first. 

3. Be consistent with terms from the glossary

When translating documents, please make sure to provide an identical translation for each occurrence of a term from the glossary. Be especially careful when translating value and values, as they might have two different translations in your language.

4. Use what’s there already

If a phrase is already in the translation memory, consider using that instead of creating a different translation.

5. If you’re stuck…

If something seems hard to translate, sometimes it’s a good idea to skip that text until later, progressing through the document will give you a clearer picture, and it’s easy to find and fill in the missing translations later.

6. Stick to the text…

Please DO NOT translate text inside curly brackets (e.g. {{policy-life-cycle.md}}). these are file names and need to remain as they are. Also, please DO NOT translate anything marked as “hidden texts” (like “inline, fit”), this is used for positioning and sizing images.

7. Don’t trust the counter…

Crowding provides a total percentage counter for each language, but that is misleading, because older versions don’t have to be fully translated, so a language might be complete while the counter is only at, say, 50%. In addition to that, there’s a counter inside each version’s folder, which is also misleading, because it counts only the number of untranslated words introduced in that version, so 50% might be 50% of 1000 words, or 50% of 5000 words.  Also, if we change just one word in a sentence, the complete sentence counts as changed, but Crowdin will present the translation of the previous version for you to copy and change that word, which is really fast. 
Take a look at our brief tutorial to assist you with your first steps in Crowdin, or go back to the Translation Project page.