Running OmegaT 3.0 in Ubuntu
At the end April 2013 I was asked whether I might be willing to translate the user interface (UI), a Windows specific file, the tutorial and the "readme" file of the OmegaT3.0 (beta) version (released on 25 April 2013) into German. I was also advised to use the beta version for my translation. At the end of May 2013 the complete translation of the manual turned into My first team project with OmegaT.
Installing OmegaT 3.0
This task was not easy. It was easy to download the latest version from this site. But I could not simply unpack it to an appropriate location (I had chosen to "install" the program at /home/user/.omegat2.5 or in this case .../.omegat3.0) and start it from there by double clicking on OmegaT.jar (as I had done with version 2.5 and 2.6).
On the page How to install OmegaT under Linux several ways are explained on how to install OmegaT:
- The Linux installation script, linux-install.sh.
Not said was that you launch the script in the folder by typing ./linux-install.sh. I did so in the terminal, was prompted for my password and after some time the process stopped. However, all that had been achieved was that the program was now "doubled" in /opt/omegat/OmegaT_3.0.0
- The kaptain script
This is said to enable you to select launch and configuration options from a user-friendly GUI. For the kaptain script to work, however, you must first install kaptain. If it is not in your distribution's repository, you can download it from kaptain.sourceforge.net.
I did not find the program in the software center. Therefore, I downloaded it, but was unable to install it (could not find suitable instructions). Only the "download now" button on this page http://linuxappfinder.com/package/kaptain made it possible to install kaptain using the software center.
- Launching OmegaT from the command line
To launch OmegaT from the command line, I opened the terminal and navigated to the folder containing the file OmegaT.jar, in the first place this was the folder I had created for the program with JRE
cd .omegat3.0
entered the command
java -jar OmegaT.jar
Up to the point, where I had deleted version 2.5 and 2.6 permanently and cleaned the folder /plugins/ in version 2.3 from any tokenizers I always got error messages. But then it "worked". It is also possible to launch OmegaT with a double click, but the result is that no manual is included and the "Learn to use OmegaT in 5 minutes" text is not displayed, unless you use the "kaptain script" and get the program to run in English.
Launching OmegaT with the translated UI
After I finished the translation of the file "Bundle.properties" and created the target files in OmegaT3.0 (run in Windows 7 Starter) I got a file called "Bundle_de_DE.properties". Now it was possible to start the program in Ubuntu using the terminal:
java -jar {path to}OmegaT.jar --resource-bundle={path to}Bundle_de_DE.properties
Thus I could detect some mistakes. The project (ready for proofreading) including the file "Bundle_de_DE.properties" can be downloaded in its state of 3 May 2013 as a compressed files (download file (1.1 MB).
Issues encountered during translation
Having finished the translation of the "small package" I download the project OmegaT_3.0.0_L10N_Full and made this another project. At the beginning all I had to do is determine the source and target languages in the menu "project-properties". I also copied previous glossaries and the translation memories of the translation I had done in 2009 on version 2.0.3 in the corresponding folder/s.
First I was surprised that there were only a few matches in the files I translated according to the order they had come in. I found that several languages had been added to the list of languages and their codes. However, using Wikipedia (English and German) I could establish the way these ("exotic") languages are termed in German.
LanguageTool plugin
In the file "App_LanguageTool_Plugin.xml it is explained, how you can activate the style and grammar checker for certain languages. However, as of version 3.0 it seem that the language checker (at least for German) is already included. Therefore, the text should be revised.
Images
The text in "App_LanguageTool_Plugin.xml" refers to a picture earlier in the documentation. This is a general problem. These images are taken from OmegaT in English. While it may be easy to keep these images for the translation/s one should be aware of the text displayed there, because that part of text should remain in English.
Copyright
In the document "App_LegalNotices.xml" it says that version 3.0 is distributed, but the copyright notes for the application are for the version 2.6. This might be, because 3.0 is still in its Beta state. Likewise the file "InstallingAndRunning.xml" always refers to version 2.6 when talking about installation on OS X, e.g. states "<a0>OmegaT</a0> 2.6 requires Java 1.5 to run." This should be updated as well.
User files location
In the document "App_ShortCutCustomization.xml" it is said: "You can change the already assigned shortcuts and add new shortcuts by putting a shortcut definition file in your OmegaT preferences folder (see <l0>User files location</l0>)." Yet, in the manual that came with OmegaT3.0 there was nothing that could help me to locate the folder /preferences/. In the document "FilesAndDirectories.xml" it is said: "Make it executable (<l0>chmod +x OmegaT</l0>) from the command line after making sure you are in the /OmegaT_2.5/ directory." Should "2.5" not be replaced by "x.x."?
Keyboard and shortcuts
If you look at the pages in the English Wikipedia Keyboard layout and the corresponding German page Tastaturbelegung you can see that there are number of keyboards for specific languages and regions. While computer experts might know that CTRL means Control and is the generally agreed short form for the key, simple users might look for a similar key on their keyboard in a different language and would not realize that the German for Control is "Steuerung", shortened as STRG. Similar problems arise with keys such as
- "Shift" usually only marked with a thick arrow upwards (in German it can be translated with "Umschalttaste" or "Großschreibung", shortened as "Umschalt" or "Groß")
- "Enter" broad key on the right usually marked with a small arrow down and left (in German it might be translated as "Eingabe"
For translations of a document such as "App_ShortCutCustomization.xml" it might be useful to have some kind of image at the beginning showing the English expressions. This might enable users with different keyboards and/or systems (such as Mac) to identify the keys they have to press for certain "commands". At least for the German translation the English expressions could be maintained in the translation.
SVN and/or GIT
The file "App_TeamProjects.xml" is intended to explain how to setup and run team projects using SVN or GIT, concentrating on SVN. In practice GIT has replaced the use of SVN in many places (such as upgrading MediaWiki) and does not necessarily need an administrator, in other words
- it should be recommended for people using OmegaT and
- it might be worth while considering whether links to meaningful tutorials would be a better way of letting interested people find an entry to such features.
In any way, translations are more or less useless, since this kind of stuff (commands etc.) are in English and people who want to use it need to know English on a suitable level.
Tokenizer
As far as I understood the tokenizers have been included in version 3.0. Therefore, the instruction in the file "App_TokenizerPlugin.xml" seems to be redundant.
Using a wiki for the help files
Once you have installed and launched OmegaT you can press F1 or the menu Help and find links to the manual in many languages, but for different versions. For German it is still version 1.8, although I translated the manual for version 2.03 in 2009. The windows that opens if you press F1 is usually small (can be enlarged, of course). As an alternative you could also open the relevant files (for many language) if you go to the subfolder /docs/ and the subfolder for the language you prefer. In all subfolders you have an "index.html" file as the starting point. You can open that in any browser and have a complete website (offline of course). It is easy to put these files online so that anyone can access these files from anywhere with an Internet connection. I have done so on this page of my website, where you can find the manual in five languages.
It should also be not too difficult to create one or several wikis from the help files. Besides 21 HTML files that need to be converted there are a number of pages for the appendices, tables and lists. I am not familiar with many kind of wikis but two
- MediaWiki (the software used in Wikipedia)
- PmWiki (a wiki using flatfiles instead of databases)
- for a discussion on flatfiles versus database see this page
The main reason to have a wiki instead of static HTML pages is that pages in a wiki can easily be updated by anyone (possibly restricted to logged in users with a password) without FTP or shell access and that there are talk pages where people can raise their problems and get answers. It is also easier to search in wikis than in HTML pages (for my personal experiences see below).
Using MediaWiki
It is possible to have one database for a wiki with help files for OmegaT for different languages. In order to have separate interfaces for each language one would have to set up several wikis and use different prefixes for the database. MediaWiki (currently with version 1.20.5) is pretty large for installation (some 70MB) and has many features (extensions) that might not be needed.
The advantage is that many people may be used to the structure. Like in Wikipedia it would be easy to point at "identical" pages in different languages (in the left sidebar). The discussion pages are obvious, but the problem might be that the community is not big enough to have enough experts to answer questions on the discussion pages (the users' group at Yahoo may be the better place for that).
Using PmWiki
It is somehow easier to set up PmWiki on any given webspace. The few things that have to be learned in order to format text are similar to the things one has to learn using MediaWiki. In PmWiki pages can be protected against vandalism just by requiring a password (no user name). One might also prevent people from reading certain pages that do not know the correct password.
A major advantage is that you just setup one wiki and "create" different languages by groups for each language. As far as PmWiki has been translated into different languages you would have the interface in different languages as well. It might not be as easy as in MediaWiki to point at "identical" pages in different languages, but in general that should be no problem. If you want to see how such a project may look like you can go to the Home Page for Help to Omegat3.0.