Translation
The IUF Rulebook is written in LaTex, which is a typesetting markup language. This allows us to take plain text with some formatting rules which is then automatically compiled into a nice looking pdf document with automatically numbered sections, generated Table of Contents with in-document hyperlinks and other features. It also allows for a nice system of translation through the Transifex website. Volunteers that are only helping with the actual translation can proceed to the "Translation Volunteers" section below.
Transifex is a sophisticated translation platform that the IUF uses for its Rulebook translation.
In order to help with the translation process, you must create an account and join the IUF translation team.
Sign up for a transifex account here: https://www.transifex.com/signup/
- Create a username and password.
- Fill out some additional information. Add your first and last name. Under Department choose "Localization" and under Job Title choose "Translator".
- Choose "join an existing project".
- Add the languages that you speak. Make sure to choose the base version of the language (e.g. 'fr'). In addition, you can choose the country-specific version of the language if you like (e.g. 'fr_CA'), but the base language is of most importance.
- Click 'get started' and then confirm your email address
The easiest way to Join the IUF Team is to get to the current Rulebook project page here: https://www.transifex.com/iuf/rulebook-2017/
Then click join team.
You can also search for "IUF Rulebook" and join the "Rulebook: 2017" project.
You should now be able to see (upon refreshing) the Rulebook: 2017 project dashboard.
With your account on Transifex now set up, you are ready to begin translating. Before you begin translating, please confirm with the IUF Rulebook Director (Scott Wilton) or your language's coordinator (e.g. François Wurmser for French) to confirm where your translation efforts should be focused.
Also, read the guide on the Transifex website on how to use the web editor for Translation. Transifex Guide. After reading that guide, come back here for some specific notes for our project. The following text assumes that you have already read the Transifex Guide to the web editor.
For the IUF Rulebook, the "list of resources" is divided up by Rulebook Chapter (e.g. urban_jumps, or road_racing). Select the chapter given to you by a translation coordinator to begin translating.
The strings available for translation are shown in the order that they are written in the IUF Rulebook for that chapter. The strings may be headers, chapter names, titles, paragraph text, etc. Really anything that could be translated in the Rulebook, in the order things are displayed in the rulebook. In general, short text is a header or section title of some sort, while longer text is actual rule text.
Along with simple text, there will also be some LaTeX markup (or commands) that describe things about how the text should be displayed. The next section will go over that in more detail. In the Transifex Guide (the one you just finished reading remember), it mentions the copy function.
The translation software automatically removes most LaTeX markup, but some of it must be left in because it is relevant to the translation. One example is when a few words are bolded in a sentence, when translated, those words should still be translated.
Here is an explanation of many of the relevant LaTeX markup commands, to help you translate correctly. The majority of LaTeX commands start with \ but not always.
-
\textbf{word}- This makes "word" bold. For exampleThis is \textbf{two bold} words.becomes: "This is two bold words." -
\textit{word}- This makes "word" italics. -
Single Dash (
-) - Single dashes are used to join hyphenated words (likeage-group) and to designate a range (likeages 0-10). -
Double Dash (
--) - A double dash is used to produce a long dash which is used as punctuation in English sentences. If your language also uses a long dash as punctuation (e.g. German), please insert them with a space on either side. For exampleThis is a sentence part -- and here is another -- but we continue.If your language does not use a long dash for punctuation, please insert appropriate punctuation to translate the sentence correctly. -
Ellipsis (
...) - These are inserted into the document with the LaTeX code of\ldots. At the time of writing this is only used in one place in the rulebook. Simply copy this LaTeX directly into the translated version. -
Quotes (
") - In LaTeX a starting quote mark is two individual characters like this``. A finish quote mark is two individual characters like this''. The normal quote character"should never be used. For example:He said, `` This is a quote'' yesterday.
According to a new proposal in the Main Rulebook committee, there should not be any references to gender or (biological) sex in the Rulebook, but instead references should only be made to male or female when differentiation is needed (for example when talking about age-groups or starting heats). This has been done out of respect for the difficulties of defining gender. The English version of the Rulebook will not have any reference to gender or sex in it when you begin translating, and neither should the translated versions.
In addition, the rulebook often makes use of the English grammatical construct of the singular they as a gender-neutral pronoun. For example, The riders must bring their unicycle to the starting line. They must be ready when the gun goes off. (This is not real rule text, only an illustrative example.) This has been done to remain gender neutral whenever possible.
When translating, non-native English speakers should take care that sometimes "they" is singular and sometimes plural and to translate carefully. A language that does not have a generally recognized and understood gender-neutral singular pronoun will need to come up with a general policy for these situations. This policy will be added to this document on a per-language basis here below.
There are many terms that are repeated throughout the rulebook. They should be translated the same way each time. Transifex has the "Concordance Search" to help with this. Many of the terms are defined in Chapter 1: General (specifically in the Definitions section) but not always.
In addition, there are some chapter heading and rules that are exactly the same in multiple (or all) chapters. Examples include the duplication of a starting rule between the Road and Muni chapters, or chapter headings like "Competitor Rules". This text should be translated the same way each time. Transifex has "Translation Memory" to help with this.
Please read the Transifex Guide on Using Translation Memory and Concordance Search in its entirety to understand how this works.
Finally, when translating, users may come across Rulebook Text that is unclear, confusing, or poor. When in doubt, you should also contact an expert like the Rulebook Director (Scott Wilton). Sometimes this can be because a word has multiple meanings in English and the meaning is not 100% clear to the translator. Other times this is because the rule itself is poorly written.
Transifex also has the Comment Tool which can be used for this, as described in this guide.
Every string of text that is translated by a volunteer must also be reviewed. The reviewer can never be the same person as the original translator. Transifex has a built process for reviewing translations. The job of the reviewer is to make sure that the translation conforms to the criteria described above, along with ensuring that the actual text is translated accurately and consistently. As such, a single reviewer should review an entire chapter (or at least a subchapter). People interested in reviewing a chapter must be given permission by the IUF Rulebook Director within the Transifex software in order to be able to review the strings. Please read the Transifex Tutorial on Reviewing for details on this process.
The transifex software is designed such that each translated string is either "reviewed" or "unreviewed". What this means is that if one person has already reviewed a string, then a second reviewer cannot mark the string as additionally reviewed. Transifex is not explicitly designed to have multiple reviewers for a chapter. Thus, for any chapter that has multiple people reviewing the translations, the first reviewer proceeds as normal, following the instructions above. Then as the second reviewer goes through the translations, in any case where the first reviewer approved the translation, and the second reviewer agrees, they simply leave the translation string in the "reviewed" state. If the second reviewer disagrees with a translated a string that the first reviewer approved, they should mark the string back to "unreviewed" and leave a comment (tutorial here) and/or contact the first reviewer and original author directly to attempt to correct that translation.
A draft version of the translated rulebook is automatically created once a day. This rulebook includes all text that has been translated and reviewed on Transifex. The automatic builds can be found at https://unicycling.org/files/temp/upload/iuf-rulebook-2017-XX.pdf where XX is the language code (e.g. de, fr, jp, etc.)
Links:
https://unicycling.org/files/temp/upload/iuf-rulebook-2017-de.pdf
https://unicycling.org/files/temp/upload/iuf-rulebook-2017-fr.pdf
https://unicycling.org/files/temp/upload/iuf-rulebook-2017-jp.pdf