Please offer additional languages

[jpratt]

I understand that currently the only way to add additional languages in cpanel is for the host to create the language packs themselves following the instructions at cPanel Locales and that there is no plan for cPanel to offer any other additional languages.

Is this true?

I would like to request that your reconsider this decision and start to offer official foreign language packages, too.

Thank you

[cPanelDavidG]

I understand that currently the only way to add additional languages in cpanel is for the host to create the language packs themselves following the instructions at cPanel Locales and that there is no plan for cPanel to offer any other additional languages.

Is this true?

I would like to request that your reconsider this decision and start to offer official foreign language packages, too.

Thank you

We bundle several languages with cPanel&WHM. They are admittedly in need of update, but we hope to have that taken care of in the coming months.

As for additional languages (beyond the dozen or so we bundle), yes - you would then need to create your own locale files.

[jpratt]

Thank you, yes I meant in addition to the 14 that come automatically bundled.
OK, consider this a request to make additional add-on language packages available. Thank you

[monarobase]

We would love to have a tool that would allow the community to create new and update existing language packs…

[cPanelDavidG]

Thank you, yes I meant in addition to the 14 that come automatically bundled.
OK, consider this a request to make additional add-on language packages available. Thank you

If you specify which languages you desire, that would be immensely helpful in us supplying those languages to you .

[monarobase]

Is there a reason why you don't seem to see the point of a community web based translation system like Installatron has…

Translating cPanel has always been complicated and it seems that you prefer to pay to get the translations done then making it easy for the community to do this for you.

You could have an automatic system with simple pages with 50 lines that need translating and the users could go from page to page translating the untranslated parts or even search for some parts that are not well translated as well as suggest new translations for parts that are not well translated.

I believe such a system woud save you alot of time and money in the long term and also allow us to always have a good translation.

From what I understand you plan to eventualy do this on your own for the supported languages, but what about unsupported languages ? An automatic system would allow users to create shared language packs that everyone could download and install without the need of waiting for you to decide that their is enough support for a given language.

[cPanelDavidG]

Is there a reason why you don't seem to see the point of a community web based translation system like Installatron has…

Translating cPanel has always been complicated and it seems that you prefer to pay to get the translations done then making it easy for the community to do this for you.

You could have an automatic system with simple pages with 50 lines that need translating and the users could go from page to page translating the untranslated parts or even search for some parts that are not well translated as well as suggest new translations for parts that are not well translated.

I believe such a system woud save you alot of time and money in the long term and also allow us to always have a good translation.

From what I understand you plan to eventualy do this on your own for the supported languages, but what about unsupported languages ? An automatic system would allow users to create shared language packs that everyone could download and install without the need of waiting for you to decide that their is enough support for a given language.

We are considering a system for root-level users to submit suggestions to our official translations, but those suggestions are going to be reviewed by someone familiar with that language. Keep in mind, while you may have altruistic intentions with this functionality where ideally the most we would encounter is issues between different dialects of a language or opinions relating to proper gramatical usage, not everyone is altruistic. It would be rather simple for a sysadmin having a bad day to submit a translation recommendation that would seem legitimate to a someone not familiar with that language or the cultures that use that language but someone familiar with those cultures and that language would more readily realize is an insult, hence the need for filtering by a speaker of that language.

We're in favor of being told when we messed something up since that is very helpful in letting us fix those things. However, given how big of a target we are for someone to consider doing something "for the lulz" - it's prudent for us to have a human review submissions rather than just an algorithm.

This feedback system is still in very early planning, much of it could change and I don't have an ETA yet. However, we are open to the concept of community feedback.

As for sharing of custom language files for unsupported languages, the forums seem like a great venue for that. You can upload file attachments here or to a URL and the forum thread will be your way to gather feedback about your translations (or just hear thank you's from those who appreciate your efforts). If we see many people doing this, then we can create a language sub-forum to make them easier to find. If you think of any ways we can be conducive to these efforts, given the concerns I expressed above and in the interim where we do not yet have a person who speaks that particular language to review submissions - let me know. Obviously, if we see strong demand for a language, we will consider working to accommodate it ourselves so you don't have to do the translations yourself.

[monarobase]

When I last checked we did not have a clean language file to start from and editing a language in an XML file is not the easiest method.

Some time ago I made la little script to parse the XML to a web form and recreate a new language file from the resulting form submission, but I then decided to wait for the language system to be cleaned up a bit before continuing and now that you are going to improve the existing languages in the near future I'm going to wait and see how good these translations will be.

As for checking the translations submitted by users, that's a defenate yes. Of course you can't allow anyone to submit a change and for this change to be forwarded without verification to all of your clients.

From my point of view a perfect system would be a system where users coud suggest translations for a language and other users could vote for the translations and for new strings a simple check on google translate could allow you to quickly accept a translation while tagging it for being reviewed by a translator. This way we could have translations submitted quickly and when a language pack gets a decent amount of new variables or variable on which users have requested a change you could send it of for review by your translators and they could select a translation from the list of suggested translations or, if none of them are correct, add their own translation.

[Kent Brockman]

As for checking the translations submitted by users, that's a defenate yes. Of course you can't allow anyone to submit a change and for this change to be forwarded without verification to all of your clients.

From my point of view a perfect system would be a system where users coud suggest translations for a language and other users could vote for the translations and for new strings a simple check on google translate could allow you to quickly accept a translation while tagging it for being reviewed by a translator. This way we could have translations submitted quickly and when a language pack gets a decent amount of new variables or variable on which users have requested a change you could send it of for review by your translators and they could select a translation from the list of suggested translations or, if none of them are correct, add their own translation.

I second this idea. As there are different ways to say the same in one language, admins should be able to suggest a better translation or even vote for others' proposals. Maybe a titanic effort to build such a suggestion system, but in the end cPanel will have better translations at a minor cost.

Also, one language should be reviewed by at less three native speakers, to enable brainstorming and concept exchange, because only one translator shouldn't be reviewing the strings that will be used in production systems. But I can recall that at less in spanish cPanel have a team of translators, do you?

[cPanelDavidG]

But I can recall that at less in spanish cPanel have a team of translators, do you?

A fairly sizable chunk of our staff is Spanish-speaking. It's how we provide Spanish-language documentation, Spanish-language technical support etc.

[jpratt]

I like the direction this conversation is going; in addition, I would to address the question of which languages are being requested:

Japanese is most often requested, in my opinion
We have also received requests for Hungarian, Norwegian, Czech, and Hebrew.

Requests come regularly. I have even received an offer from a customer volunteering to translate (to Japanese) so a grass-roots effort may be worth investigating as previously mentioned

[cPanelDavidG]

I like the direction this conversation is going; in addition, I would to address the question of which languages are being requested:

Japanese is most often requested, in my opinion
We have also received requests for Hungarian, Norwegian, Czech, and Hebrew.

Requests come regularly. I have even received an offer from a customer volunteering to translate (to Japanese) so a grass-roots effort may be worth investigating as previously mentioned

Japanese is a language we previously supported and intend to re-introduce (similar to Italian).

As for the other languages mentioned, people willing to perform translations of those and share them publicly are welcome to do so via the forums. Historically (based off when we still had our community-contributed translations page a few years ago), very few people are willing to contribute a translation to the general public for everyone to use (< 20 worldwide) and a very small subset of that (<10%) are willing to maintain their translations to keep them up to date after initially releasing them into the public.

If the forums become heavily utilized for this purpose, we could then investigate more sophisticated systems of accommodation.

[monarobase]

I think if it was made easier and also not made necessary to translate everything then there might be a better chance of people participating…

[cPanelDavidG]

I think if it was made easier and also not made necessary to translate everything then there might be a better chance of people participating…

Be mindful that anyone given access to edit locales in WHM can use the Live Mode. This allows them to click on phrases and translate them on-screen. No need to know XML or anything like that, just the ability to point, click and type.

[monarobase]

Last time I tried the Live mode it was not possible to translate almost half of the content shown on the screen…

The live mode would be perfect if it worked for everything.

Last time I tried to finish the translation I found the following status :

Live mode allowed to translate about 50%
Opening the XML, parsing the XML, removing the duplicate entries a generating a new XML allowed to translate a further 40%
10% was not translatable.

For the last 3 years I have been requesting the ability to translate everything easily. Live mode is easy but not complete, XML is difficulte but more complete. Until the tools are fixed I don't see the point of paying translaters. I hope that before getting the translations done that you made everything in cPanel (not fussed about WHM) translatable.

I haven't checked out the status of 11.32's ability to be translated, maybe alot has been fixed and I'm complaining about nothing… (hope so )