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purpose: Will Kahn-Greene's blog of Miro, PyBlosxom, Python, GNU/Linux, random content, PyBlosxom, Miro, and other projects mixed in there ad hoc, half-baked, and with a twist of lemon

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Fri, 20 May 2011

Miro 4.0: now with swedish chef!

A while back, Ned Batchelder wrote about poxx.py which he wrote that generates a completely translated .po file to help find strings in his apps that weren't being translated.

We on the Miro dev team had a similar need. Additionally, we have the problem where in some languages, the translated string is longer than the English version and that creates some sizing issues in the ui code.

I took Ned's poxx.py, fixed some issues I had with it, then rewrote the transform to do something reminiscent of what the Swedish Chef would say. The transform has the following properties:

  1. the output is vaguely readable
  2. the output is longer than the input which helps us find ui issues
  3. the output is clearly distinguished from English which helps us find strings that aren't getting translated
  4. the output is mildly amusing which is sometimes important in dark times

I threw it together in an hour. It's not a beautiful transform and it doesn't add any "bork bork bork". I might tweak it some rainy day.

It's in our git repository here:

https://git.participatoryculture.org/miro/tree/tv/resources/locale/poxx.py

It'll also be in Miro 4.0. You can choose the Swedish Chef language in the language dropdown in the Preferences dialog. It's "swch" and it'll be towards the bottom.

Also, skimming the comments of Ned's entry, there's another tool that does this:

http://translate.sourceforge.net/wiki/toolkit/podebug

[ posted on: Fri, 20 May 2011 | tags: miro, work | category: /miro | Permalink ]
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