gui: Deal with translation sabotager

andronoob commented at 2:47 pm on August 11, 2022: none

I’m sorry if this doesn’t worth opening a new issue thread as it’s already mentioned in #24987.

Bitcoin Core currently makes use of Transifex for localization/translation. However I can’t see activity stream on Bitcoin Core’s Transifex project, therefore it’s difficult to track what recent changes of translated text have been made.

Recently zh_CN translation seems to be sabotaged, in the way that all the translated text strings are replaced with its corresponding original English text.

To make translation contributors’ life easier, I think something should be done, like what Electrum’s project hosted on Crowdin currently enjoys: the activity stream feature which allows effective tracking of translated text.

andronoob commented at 2:50 pm on August 11, 2022: none

Besides, I hope the sabotage done to zh_CN translation could be reverted in some easy way.

fanquake commented at 3:25 pm on August 11, 2022: member

cc @hebasto

hebasto added the label GUI on Aug 11, 2022

hebasto commented at 6:44 pm on August 11, 2022: member

It is unfortunate that Transifex.com have no means to raise an issue, such as this on, and track it. Therefore, I think it is ok to bring it here, or in the GUI repo.

We experienced similar issues at lease two times in the past, unfortunately. French and Ukrainian translations were the targets. It is still unclear what was that – a sabotage, an act of vandalism or a blunder.

In both previous cases translation teams managed to fix everything themselves. French team also contacted to Transifex support.

Actually, it is translation team’s responsibility. The zh_CN team has 197 translators, and seone as a coordinator who has not been active for years. Why not nominate a new person or a few people for coordinator role on the IRC chat?

FWIW, after the issue with Ukrainian translation, I’ve volunteered for a coordinator role in the Ukrainian team. And now I have backups of translations.

Besides, I hope the sabotage done to zh_CN translation could be reverted in some easy way.

I guess it could be possible to restore translations from the src/qt/locale/bitcoin_zh_CN.ts. But it definitely requires the collaboration of the zh_CN team translators.

andronoob commented at 4:29 pm on August 12, 2022: none

We experienced similar issues at lease two times in the past, unfortunately. French and Ukrainian translations were the targets. It is still unclear what was that – a sabotage, an act of vandalism or a blunder.

Electrum@Crowdin has activity stream, while Bitcoin Core@Transifex doesn’t.

I wonder whether it’s possible to migrate to Crowdin, or maybe Transifex will also be willing to enable this feature for Bitcoin Core?

In my opinion activity stream is effective against sporadic modifications. If it’s large-scale we then need something like git reset --hard.

I guess it could be possible to restore translations from the src/qt/locale/bitcoin_zh_CN.ts. But it definitely requires the collaboration of the zh_CN team translators.

Is there something like step-by-step guide etc?

andronoob commented at 4:48 pm on August 12, 2022: none

I hope there could be something to revert it entirely/in-bulk. Otherwise it would be obviously painful to manually revert one thousand text strings one-by-one.

andronoob commented at 2:49 pm on August 23, 2022: none

I’ve just finished writing a NodeJS script to get this job done: https://gist.github.com/andronoob/eff442b8058781f829b925ff1c5d625d

edit: just now I modified the script to set unseen translated (target) text to SABOTAGED if it’s identical to the source text.

console output

edit2: modified script to fix not-yet-released updated version of Bitcoin Core: https://gist.github.com/andronoob/c693004c0be3f8e23c8ed37c20c0ea5a

console output

MarcoFalke renamed this:
~~Deal with translation sabotager~~
gui: Deal with translation sabotager
on Aug 23, 2022

andronoob commented at 3:27 pm on August 23, 2022: none

Some strings are still missing from src/qt/locale/bitcoin_zh_CN.ts so that they have to be manually fixed. To be honest Transifex is acting weird: sometimes the correct translation shown in the history tab can be copied with one-click, but sometimes it won’t allow doing this.

andronoob commented at 3:37 pm on August 23, 2022: none

Finished fixing 23.0 and 24.0, and then created a repository for backup purpose: https://github.com/andronoob/bitcoin-transifex-data/

fanquake commented at 4:16 pm on August 31, 2022: member

Finished fixing 23.0 and 24.0

Can this issue be closed now?

fanquake added this to the milestone 24.0 on Sep 1, 2022

hebasto commented at 9:56 am on September 1, 2022: member

Finished fixing 23.0 and 24.0, and then created a repository for backup purpose: https://github.com/andronoob/bitcoin-transifex-data/

Thank you @andronoob

Closing this issue.

hebasto closed this on Sep 1, 2022

bitcoin locked this on Sep 1, 2023

gui: Deal with translation sabotager #25821