[Foundation-l] Answers to more questions/comments regarding FundCORE

[David Strauss]

I'm still catching up with foundation-l since joining. I had no idea so 
much discussion happened here regarding FundCORE.

All the questions/comments are paraphrased.

 > Translating is very hard without context. I can't tell if something's
 > a noun or a verb, nor what gender to use for adjectives.

I'm very new to internationalization, so please be patient. I'll have to 
add context explanations to each translated word/phrase. Also keep in 
mind that the previous fundraising report system was English-only, so I 
have no existing translation set on which to build.

 > Using flags for languages is terrible.

I agree. It happened to be the default for the internationalization 
system I'm using, but I've disabled it now.

 > Some languages people want don't have translations for Drupal's core
 > already, and translating Drupal's core for these languages isn't
 > feasible.

For languages that don't have Drupal translations already, we only need 
to translate the very limited set of Drupal phrases and words that are 
publicly visible. Well over 90% of the Drupal core translation is for 
the administrative area, which does not need internationalization into 
every language because very few people use it. About 10 additional 
words/phrases require translation if no Drupal core translation exists.

 > I've translated "Fundraising C.O.R.E." to another language, but the
 > title for the site remains untranslated.

The translation templates for Drupal modules are automatically created, 
and I should have pruned it better. "Fundraising C.O.R.E." should either 
not be translated at all or translated everywhere. I don't know how to 
change the site title for each language (or even if it's possible), so 
I'll probably opt for the former.

 > The "coming soon" announcement isn't offered for translation.

That's intentional. I change it so frequently that it would be in 
English most of the time, anyway. It's also non-essential to using the site.

 > "Central Online Reporting Engine" isn't available for translation.

I'm working on this. I think this needs to be localized. Unfortunately, 
how to do so is not obvious because it's not part of my module; it's 
part of the global site configuration.

 > Why not just use MediaWiki? It has translations for many of these
 > languages.

1. I would have to write significantly more code to offer the same 
features from within MediaWiki.
2. Our fundraising database is CiviCRM, which is Drupal-based.
3. I hope to roll many of the features of FundCORE into CiviCRM itself. 
If the initial code is Drupal-based, this will be far easier.
4. The CivicSpace team (Drupal-based) is interested in contributing to 
the project.
5. Drupal is free software, so it's not morally worse for the Foundation 
to use.
6. Creating a Drupal module that integrates with CiviCRM is a more 
valuable contribution to the free software community than contributing a 
MediaWiki extension that integrates with CiviCRM.
7. Cherokee is the first and only translation we've been offered that 
doesn't already have extensive Drupal support. Now that a member of our 
community has generously contributed a full Drupal core translation, 
this is no longer an issue for us. The Drupal community has also benefited.
8. Most of the translation effort is for my module. MediaWiki's existing 
translations do not help here.

 > What are the current top priorities for FundCORE?

- Right-aligning amounts
- Filtering comments for donations less than US$5 or equivalent
- Implementing full support for matching donations in the meter and on 
the donations listing: 
<http://fundraising.wikimedia.org/payments/meter/index2.php>

 > Dictionary translations are terrible. Why would anyone suggest we do
 > one?

I'll take the heat of first noting this in an email to Brad. I wasn't 
expecting it to be re-published to foundation-l. My intention was to 
relay how simple I thought the translations would be, not to have people 
without any language experience blindly use a dictionary. I apologize 
for any confusion.

Sincerely,
David Strauss