Producing translated reports with csasdown

You can control the csasdown template language with the french sub-option for each output type. For example, for Tech Reports, open index.Rmd in your French report folder and change this:

output:
 csasdown::techreport_pdf:
   french: false

to this:

output:
 csasdown::techreport_pdf:
   french: true

In general, the simplest way we've found to get the content translated is:

• copy the contents of the .Rmd files into corresponding .docx files
• create an Excel spreadsheet with a row for each figure axis label, legend, etc. that needs to be translated but isn't directly within the .Rmd files
• have the .docx files translated; include a set of instructions (here's a template to start)
• copy the contents of your report folder with the .Rmd files to a new appropriately named folder; e.g. report and report-french
• when you get back translated .docx files, paste the translated content into the .Rmd; do this file by file and render the document frequently to find any errors that translation has introduced (this cannot be overemphasized—you may even choose to work in sections of text for larger files)
• you can comment out sections in bookdown.yml with # to speed up rendering and to troubleshoot any translation issues

If you are particularly adept with Git, you may choose instead to keep the French version on a separate branch.

Make sure all your table and figure-producing functions create both French and English versions based on a french R global option. For example:

library(rosettafish)

plot_example <- function(){
  french <- isTRUE(getOption("french"))
  plot(1:10, 2011:2020, xlab = en2fr("year", french))
}

# English:
plot_example()

# French:
options(french = TRUE)
plot_example()

Then set the global french option at the beginning of your French report .Rmd files.

When producing both and English and a French versions of a document, it is important to follow the language-specific formatting rules.

Item	English	French
Decimal separator	period	comma
Long number separator	comma	space

You can set the decimal to comma with R global option:

options(OutDec = ",")

Do this at the beginning of a French document. Note that in rare cases, this can create confusing errors if an R function is expecting decimals to be ..

You can format the big/long numbers separator with formatC() for one-off numbers:

x <- 123456789101112 
formatC(x, format = "f", big.mark = " ", digits = 0)
#> "123 456 789 101 112"

Or within knitr kable() tables (which is what csasdown::csas_table() is a wrapper for) with:

x <- data.frame(col1 = rnorm(3, 1e6, 1e4))
csasdown::csas_table(x, format.args = list(decimal.mark = ',', big.mark = " "))
#>         col1
#> ------------
#>  1 008 137,9
#>    988 438,3
#>    999 657,5