Translating QueueMetrics used to require just "a text editor and a little patience". Unfortunately, as there is no accepted standard for plain text encoding, it required a set of encoding transformations to make a language file visible in your favourite text editor and then to make your changes visible to QueueMetrics.
That’s why Loway developed a simple piece of software named PolyVox that acts as a single storage point for all translations and is accessed using a web browser.
PolyVox allows to:
- Translate the web application directly online
- Download a language file to be tested with your version of QueueMetrics
- Translate incrementally, that is, by filling in only the items that are missing
In order to access PolyVox, you need a set of credentials to log on to the web application. To obtain them, please contact Loway by expressing your will to help translate QueueMetrics and you will receive them immediately.
PolyVox is found at http://demo.loway.ch/polyvox
When you first log on you will see all the languages available for the project.
The following statistics apply:
- Entries is the total number of items in the whole language
- Complete is the number of items for which there is at least one translation.
- Translated is the percentage of the language for which at least a translation exists
- On DB is the number of items (current and past ) that are stored in the application for this language
The following actions apply:
- Complete will open up a translation list made up of all missing items, to be completed in the short-term. If there are no missing items, this option does not appear.
- View all lets you review the full translation
- Download lets you download a translation file to be tested in QueueMetrics
You may also search for a specific label or key through the "Search" page.
The list editor is the main place where data is entered into PolyVox.
The list editor always works on a subset of entries for a given language - they may originate from a search query, or from the fact that there are incomplete entries to be completed. The title of the working set is displayed, so you know what you are editing.
Each set is shown in pages, and you can page back and forward by clicking on the PREV, NEXT or jump to a specific page by selecting its page number.
When you click on an entry or move using the TAB key, the current entry will expand and show the same entry in other languages, so you have a guide about its meaning. You can freely edit the entry and it will be saved automatically when you move to a new field or to a new page.The field’s background will change according to the entry’s status:
- White: Entry unchanged from what is available on the database
- Gray: the entry is being saved
- Yellow: the modified entry was saved successfully
The text editor supports UTF-8 encoding, so you can use any character with no need to resort to HTML entities or else, in order to make it viewable.
Translators cannot add new languages directly, but they can ask for a new language to be added. They will need to provide Loway with the following pieces of information, as they apply to the new language:
| Entry | Description |
|---|---|
name | The name of this translation, translated itself (e.g. ‘Italiano‘ for Italian) |
code | The language and country this translation is for, e.g. ‘en_US‘ |
df_complete | A date and time sequence, e.g. ‘MMMM dd yyyy, H:mm‘ for ‘May 24 2008, 8:32‘ |
df_completeshort | A shortened complete date and time, e.g ‘MM/dd - H:mm:ss‘ for ‘05/24 - 8:32:23‘ |
df_date | A date, e.g. ‘yyyy-MM-dd‘ for ‘2008-05-24‘ |
df_time | A time format, e.g. ‘H:mm:ss‘ for ‘8:32:23‘ |
df_time_short | A short time format, e.g ‘H:mm‘ for ‘8:32‘ |
left_to_right | If the language is written left-to-right or right-to-left (This is not currently used) |
(A full list of valid date and time placeholders can be found at: http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/docs/api/java/text/SimpleDateFormat.html )
You can simply download the modified file by clicking on the Download label next to the language translation. You can then paste the new modified translation into the correct language file, that can be found under WEB-INF/LIntl/.
The default file name for that file is queuemetrics_en_US.properties, changing en_US to the correct locale for your translation.
You can easily see the status of a translation by clicking on the "Toggle view" button on the Download page; this will show all strings as they will be printed in QueueMetrics.
In order to test the new file, you should log off QueueMetrics and restart the servlet container ( /etc/init.d/queuemetrics restart ). Then log on again. You can check the correct version by looking at the current language pack entry in the Licence page.