[Translators-l] Please help us translate the November 2011 Editor Survey

Philippe Verdy verdy_p at wanadoo.fr
Sat Nov 19 00:55:48 UTC 2011


After checking the Arabic translation here
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Wikipedia_Editors_Survey_November_2011/ar
It looks like there are serious formatting problems. Notably caused by
the directionality of text :

- incorrect use of punctuation signs (notably the incorrect mirrored
question mark, used at the begining of lines)
- answer item numbered with Latin letters have had their letters
translitterated to Arabic. Is it expected ? Are those letters part of
the visible answer ?

Additionally, the wikitext editor on Meta still does not have the
feature of allowing the whole edit window (the textarea form) swapped
forth and back  (with a clickable icon or keyboard shortcut) from the
default LTR directionality (with lines starting by default on the left
margin) to the RTL directionality (with lines starting by default on
the right margin). This is absolutely needed to get the correct BiDi
layout and to ease the text editing.

The only remaining option is to try a preview, but this does not work
in the preview because paragraphs always start with the same default
margin, and then try to autodetermine their starting direction from
the first character of the paragraph that sets a strong direction
(letters or digits: OK; punctuation signs : no) in order to resolve
the direction of the first characters and where to layout them
according to the rest of the line (but the leading numbering of
questions and answer items forces another guess, even if the start
margin has already been set externally).

Really, this page would have been much easier to translate to RTL
languages like Arabic and Hebrew, if it had used the Translator
extension, where the general page layout was fixed and only the true
parts to translate had been included in translatable resources.

2011/11/19 Ayush Khanna <akhanna at wikimedia.org>:
> Hello again,
> Firstly, thank you very much for your help with the translations so far. Our
> efforts to reach out to as many members of the Wikipedia community as
> possible can only be realized because of the time and effort that you have
> put in.
> We require some assistance in ensuring that the translations are ready for
> use in the survey.
> - For Danish, German, Spanish, Finnish and Dutch, some of the questions need
> to be translated
> - For French, Italian, Serbo-Croatian, Chinese Traditional and Chinese
> Simplified, surveys are complete but need to be proofread
> We are hoping to have translations ready by Monday, 21 November. Once again,
> the meta link is
> at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Wikipedia_Editors_Survey_November_2011/Translation.
> Thank you for your support.
> Ayush Khanna
> Data Analyst, Global Development
> Wikimedia Foundation
> 415.839.6885 x6805
>
> On Tue, Nov 1, 2011 at 7:35 PM, Ayush Khanna <akhanna at wikimedia.org> wrote:
>>
>> Hi all,
>> The questionnaire for the November 2011 Editor Survey - the second
>> semi-annual Editor Survey conducted by the Wikimedia Foundation, is now
>> ready. This edition of the survey will serve as a longitudinal study, and
>> will help us understand the changes in editor demographics, needs and
>> experiences.
>> We are hoping to offer the survey in 19
>> languages: Arabic, Catalan, Danish, German, English, Spanish,
>> Finnish, French, Hebrew, Croatian, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Dutch,
>> Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Chinese Traditional and Chinese Simplified.
>> Since we have limited resources to program the survey in multiple languages,
>> we used the data from the previous survey to arrive at this list. Please
>> help us by translating the survey to all these languages! The meta page is
>> located
>> at: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Wikipedia_Editors_Survey_November_2011/Translation
>> In addition, the Survey Banner remains unchanged from the previous
>> iteration of the survey, except for the addition of the word "Second". The
>> meta page, with the last survey's translations in place, can be found
>> at: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Wikipedia_Editors_Survey_November_2011/CentralNotice.
>> Of course, for the banner, we welcome translations in all languages.
>> We are aiming to launch the survey by the third week of November, so it
>> would be great if it were possible to have translations completed by the
>> hard deadline of Monday, November 14.
>> Thanks a lot for your help. In case there are any questions/concerns,
>> please contact me.
>> Ayush Khanna
>> Data Analyst, Global Development
>> Wikimedia Foundation
>> 415.839.6885 x6805
>> PS: To learn more about the survey, and the choice of languages, read the
>> FAQ
>> at: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Wikipedia_Editors_Survey_November_2011
>
>
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