Localization of the webpage

[awvwgk]

Is there a way we can offer localization with the current website design? What would we have to do from a technical point of view to be able to put up a localized version of fortran-lang.org?

Inspired by @vmagnin's post at https://fortran-lang.discourse.group/t/promoting-fortran-in-non-english-languages/678

[certik]

Yes I think that is a good idea, as long as people are willing to maintain the translations. Here is how we do it in for the SymPy's webpage:

https://github.com/sympy/sympy.github.com#translations

[vmagnin]

As written in the Discourse, if translating pages is decided, I of course agree to work on the french translation. And of course, it could be a collaborative work if there is other people interested here.

[awvwgk]

@vmagnin Definitely, I consider it more a matter of figuring out the technicalities to get this running with jekyll. I already found plenty of ugly solutions when searching for jekyll i18n, but nothing that strikes me as elegant and simple yet.

On this topic, I would contribute to German translations.

[vmagnin]

Definitely, I consider it more a matter of figuring out the technicalities to get this running with jekyll.

Yes, the main problem is probably a technical one. How to transform the site into a multi-language site... It seems not trivial... And would probably need a lot of work.

[vmagnin]

Maybe we could, at least as a first step, just translate the homepage. Perhaps it would be sufficient to make the site appears in Google with a good pagerank. I don't know if the number of pages available in the national language is taken into account in the Google algorithm... We could even make an experiment: we translate the homepage just in one language, and we wait some days (or weeks ?) to see if it has an effect on search engines.
And I guess that once people have found the website, most will be able to understand something in the english pages.

[awvwgk]

I found jekyll-multiple-languages-plugin which allows side localization with jekyll in an elegant way. First, I already created a branch i18n, where you can give it a try.

1. add your language in the _config.yml under languages (the first language is the default)

fortran-lang.org/_config.yml

Line 7 in f14c12f

languages: ["en"]

2. create the file _i18n/<lang>.yml and the directory _i18n/<lang> (now you can visit http://127.0.0.1:4000/<lang>/ already, untranslated pages are taken from the default language branch)
3. mirror the content of _i18n/en in your _i18n/<lang> directory, i.e. create _i18n/<lang>/index.html to translate the main page

There are a lot of small details I still have to figure out, but this basically looks like a suitable solution for the webpage.

[vmagnin]

3. mirror the content of `_i18n/en` in your `_i18n/<lang>` directory, _i.e._ create `_i18n/<lang>/index.html` to translate the main page

@awvwgk , I have forked your repository. I will try these days to translate just the homepage to begin. Just a question concerning your third point: should I mirror all the content of _i18n/en ? or just the files I want to translate ? (it's what I understand, but I am not sure...)

Another newbie question: I guess that to access to http://127.0.0.1:4000/<lang>/ I need to install jekyll on my machine? (seems to be available in Ubuntu)

[awvwgk]

@vmagnin Just adding the files you translate is sufficient, the rest will be filled in automatically from the _i18n/en tree. Let me know if this works as expected. Note, currently my setup only allows to translate the body but not the keywords in the header and footer and so on, but I will look into this soon.

To setup the webpage locally follow the guide in the README at https://github.com/fortran-lang/fortran-lang.org#setup. After you have setup everything run bundle exec jekyll serve --watch in another terminal and open http://127.0.0.1:4000 in your webbrowser to get a live preview while you edit the content.

[aslozada]

This procedure works correctly. Jekyll server returns some warnings about deprecated arguments.

fortran-lang.org/.bundle/ruby/2.7.0/gems/jekyll-3.8.6/lib/jekyll/tags/include.rb:194: warning: Using the last argument as keyword parameters is deprecated

I am trying with a Spanish translation

[vmagnin]

I have done everything, including _i18n/fr.yml and _i18n/fr/index.html
I can access to my local english version, but not the french version with http://127.0.0.1:4000/fr/ in my web browser:
Not Found
`/fr/' not found.
WEBrick/1.6.0 (Ruby/2.7.1/2020-03-31) at 127.0.0.1:4000

Should I install jekyll-multiple-languages-plugin with bundle ? I don't see it when I type "bundle install" (but I see Installing i18n 0.9.5)

[vmagnin]

Sorry, my second terminal (the jekyll one) was not opened in the i18n but the master branch...
Now bundle install successfully installed the jekyll-multiple-languages-plugin
It's OK, I have translated one sentence and I see it in http://127.0.0.1:4000/fr/
:-)

[awvwgk]

I put together a first draft patch for the localized homepage at #201, if you want to give it a try, there is now support for localizing (most of the) keywords in the navigation and footer and adding translated pages. The process is outlined here.

It has still a few plenty rough edges, so feedback is much appreciated. Stay tuned.

[aslozada]

Would it appropriate build a branch to each language during translation process?

e.g.

i81n
|
| -- Default language
| -- English
| -- Spanish
| -- French
| -- German
| -- Czech
...

[aslozada]

I put together a first draft patch for the localized homepage at #201, if you want to give it a try, there is now support for localizing (most of the) keywords in the navigation and footer and adding translated pages. The process is outlined here.

It has still a few plenty rough edges, so feedback is much appreciated. Stay tuned.

@awvwgk. If the general layout (_i18n /_layouts) is kept fixed, the final aspect of the footer is modified by adding words with a greater number of characters. Some "line breaks" are introduced.

[vmagnin]

Would it appropriate build a branch to each language during translation process?

In my opinion, it is not necessary, each language having its own directory. And it would multiply the number of branches in the project.

[aslozada]

I put together a first draft patch for the localized homepage at #201, if you want to give it a try, there is now support for localizing (most of the) keywords in the navigation and footer and adding translated pages. The process is outlined here.
It has still a few plenty rough edges, so feedback is much appreciated. Stay tuned.

@awvwgk. If the general layout (_i18n /_layouts) is kept fixed, the final aspect of the footer is modified by adding words with a greater number of characters. Some "line breaks" are introduced.

Thanks, @vmagnin. Yes, my comment is a bit confusing.
Perhaps the following images describe better,

Footer in the English version

Footer in the Spanish version

[awvwgk]

I see, yes they are currently just 33% of the column wide. If we will have many languages there might be even problems with the language keys. I will probably try two rows in the footer instead.

[vmagnin]

@aslozada , no, not confusing. My emoji was just meaning I have the same annoying (minor) problem. In my case, even for the GitHub message on the right.

[awvwgk]

I made a second line for the languages, if we get many translations and small screens (mobile) line breaks can't be avoided, but this is something to worry about once we have that much translations:

[awvwgk]

This issue will be resolved with the migration to the new webpage at https://github.com/fortran-lang/webpage (see #415).