- From: olivier Thereaux <ot@w3.org>
- Date: Thu, 4 Jan 2007 15:42:50 -0500
- To: J.J.SOLARI <jjsolari@pobox.com>
- Cc: W3C Translators <w3c-translators@w3.org>, "CSS Validator list" <www-validator-css@w3.org>
Bonjour Jean-Jacques, hi all. On Dec 18, 2006, at 08:50 , J.J.SOLARI wrote: > Congratulations for bringing up the CSS Validator localization project > in time for W3C tenth anniversary! Thank you, and thanks to all who helped with this release, especially translators. > In particular, when asking for translation of such files as > "Message.properties" relevant to the CSS Validator, they should either > contain examples of actual validation outputs (warnings or errors), or > some readme file should be attached with such examples. While working with translators, I have indeed noticed that the instructions I was giving were often insufficient, so I welcome your idea that we could build more of a "kit for translators". As an exercise, here are the three types of files that need translation, and how they need to be translated. 1) documentation and main interface (original files in English: *.html.en) For these files, the translator should - translate all text except the language menu (i.e ignore the content of <ul id="lang_choice"> ) - translate the value of alt="..." and title="..." attributes - NOT change the markup, or the targets of the links, or the values of ids and names - keep the encoding as utf-8, without BOM (some editor software may not be able to do that) 2) results templates (original file in English: xhtml.properties.en) This file is a little more complex. It is a template file which the Java program will read and expand. For this file, the work of the translator will be to: - translate all text and values of alt and title attributes, in a way similar to the documentation - NOT translate the keywords such as "no-error-or-warning: ". These are used by the program and should stay untouched. - keep the encoding as utf-8 - be careful not to add line breaks in the text. If adding line breaks, make sure to escape them as follows: This text will make the validator crash This text will keep\ the validator happy 3) error messages (original file in English: Messages.properties.en) These files are similar to the result templates, but their content is text, not markup. In a way similar to 2), translators should make sure to: - not translate the keywords before the colons (e.g "warning.same- colors:" should be left as is). Translate the text after the colon. - understand that "%s" is a special substitution keyword that will be replaced by a value specific to the stylesheet validated. For example, in Same colors for %s and %s "%s" will be replaced by the two contexts in which the color is similar, and should not. Worth noting, when there are several substitution "%s" in a message, their order matters. This may make translation tricky in some rare cases. e.g: The pseudo-class .%s can't appear here in the HTML context %s [ I will put this as translation documentation, perhaps on the wiki, after I get some feedback ] Now, onto the actual answer to your request: I agree that (some of) the messages are hard to translate without a little more context to understand them. But I am not sure that samples of CSS triggering the error would be useful. Take for example error.shape-separator: Invalid separator in shape definition. It must be a comma. Would it be more useful to know that this can be triggered by: P { clip: rect(5px 10px 10px 5px); } ? Or would it be more useful to point to e.g http://www.w3.org/TR/REC- CSS2/visufx.html#value-def-shape and explain that the syntax of shapes need to have the parameters separated by commas, unlike a lot of other types of sequence of values in CSS? I think, therefore, that what could really be useful, for translators as well as users, would be to have detailed explanations and pointers for some of the more complex messages, in a way similar to what is done in the markup validator for instance. This is no small project: Björn Höhrmann has been doing a great job of explaining some of the most annoyingly obscure error messages ( http://www.websitedev.de/css/ validator-faq ) but there is a lot of work left, especially if the explanations later have to be translated in all languages supported. But it could be really worth it... Would anyone on the css validator community (ideally a 2-3 people task force) be eager to take this on? Thank you, -- olivier
Received on Thursday, 4 January 2007 20:44:08 UTC