Translation process update for 0.9 #4006

For 0.9 we want to avoid the situation from 0.8 where it was impossible to get updated translations into latter 0.8 versions. The reason that this was no longer possible is that the messages that changed in master relative to 0.8 were (automatically) removed from the translation files.

For this reason I would like to change the translation process a bit.

The first step would be to create a script to combine master and 0.9 English translation files (bitcoin_en.ts). This script would add messages from both, and merge duplicate messages intelligently [1]. This avoids that the 0.9 variants of messages get pruned.

The result of this script would then be committed either to master or a new branch created specifically for Transifex to fetch from. The overall effect will be that translators can translate messages from both branches with minimal overhead.

The resulting translations can then be imported and used for both future 0.9 releases and during development of master.

General guidelines:

• Try to keep as much as possible consistency between 0.9 and master mesages.
  • This means: message changes (for typos or clarification) should be merged into both 0.9 and 0.10.
  • Some message changes cannot be merged into both branches because they accompany functionality changes. This is fine.

[1] For example, merge messages that are exactly the same and that appear in the same file.

I've marked this high priority because this should happen before next update of the English translation, to avoid any more translated 0.9 messages from being lost.

@warren had some ideas on this. Have you talked to him?

@luke-jr laanwj's approach is much better than my idea of translating only 0.9 in Transifex for now. I'm glad he is prioritizing this.

I've opted for another approach. The one I outlined here would result in complications for translators such as strings that are almost the same but slightly different.

I've renamed the current resource on transifex to QT Translation 0.9.x and set the source URI to https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/raw/0.9.2/src/qt/locale/bitcoin_en.ts.

Once strings for 0.10.x have settled down a bit I'm going to add a new resource for that version, and clone the 0.9.x strings as far as they still overlap. This is easier to understand than some hybrid file.

Seems like a good idea, but what about the current new strings on master that don't show up anywhere for translation? This will reduce the time translators have to translate, at least currently.

Well as long as people are changing strings all over the place to add dots, change capitalization, remove example addresses, and other things (I'm not looking at anyone in particular :-) ) I think it's better to not have translations for 0.10 for now. That's what I mean with settling down. Once we feel confident that the English strings are alright and we won't be adding/removing/modifying many strings we can open translations.

This makes sense :)... and I can laugh about myself ^^.