blankev wrote on Sunday, March 22, 2009:
Dear members of the translation headache group,
in my version of OpenEMR 3.0.0 there are:
Language_constants: 2684 definitions in English. These are the coded parts in all OpenEMR used texts.
My Dutch translation list has now 908 translated sentences and need an estimated 10% correction.
I have no real good working translation in Spanish as yet, but my most recent list was about 173 wrong translation entities
I have no list for: Swedish, German, Hebrew.
Looking at these 2684 constant lines there are at least a couple that can be stricken to make a clean start. By getting rid of abundance nothing is lost. (except for the fact that you have to find the original constant for that specific translation)
Some remarks:
AM and PM, Mr, Dr, MC, VISA, is worldwide understood an does not need translation.
A few translations are almost the same: "Day" and "Day:" are different, but with the right coding can be made the same.
Some one words in English have a different meaning and in Dutch needs two different translation to make the text understandable in Dutch. So one word in English needs in a different place another translation, not to be confusing for the user.
Something like "Error in " is four times in the English definition list.
DOB translated in Geboortedatum gives some terrible layout confusion on the screen. So translations should be about the same length not to make OpenEMR look like a modern art drawing
Proposal:
1. Since finding the place of any English-constants in the original flies is like going back to middle ages to find the original text, I propose to keep the english_constant definition list as is and these should be used as new software parts come up, and need to be made into hidden coding for correct translations in due time.
2. With any new wording in OpenEMR, the maker should choose from the different English_Constants wherever possible.
Now if my propositions are accepted we get some new entities:
1. A definition list that should be used, so the original English-constant list can be kept to a minimum
2. Any translation list has to be made with a group of individuals with the knowledge of what has been changed and what has not yet been translated.
3. All new texts in OpenEMR should be coded with code numbers of the original English-Constants
Whenever a new list of English_constants is out, translations can be added to the new OpenEMR version, like Larry did in the past.
With this system we still have to overcome at least the next problems:
1. Create the correct translation (If I remember well, the correct translation for the Spanish version means a necessary group of about 3 - 7 different lists: Spanish from Spain, Latin America and Caribbean, but this is not so bad if we find enough persons involved in translation department.
2. During new software development of OpenEMR a group has to include the new and old english_constants in the different files.
3. Keep the text used in the English original wording as close as possible to the English_constants.
4. We need to find a solution for people who love their own translations so their own list will not be overwritten by any new version of OpenEMR or that they at least can have a choice to accept or reject their own translation. Or make a comparison before the new translations are to be included.
:-)) , ;-)),
Mister President of the OpenEMR society can we bring something like mentioned before into vote and than find a way to cover the roads to travel and make OpenEMR translingual by hitting the language button? (Sam, Rod, I know you are in the board and I know you have the knowledge of what it means to implement complete integrations of this translation issue.)
Remark: I would love to have an easier translation solution with less effort and better result, but that goes beyond my software programming stupidity! Something like Xanadu on the fly would be great, but beyond reach I suppose…
Pimm