Invite send on transifex.

Added 1 hours later:

Uploaded some existing locales to Transifex.

By the way, developers should have ability to translate their plugins same way as well. Had any ideas?

• Changes in the code a backwards-compatible. All existing plugins work as before.
• There's a convertor tool for the main package langfiles which automates 95% of changes that need to be made in langfiles.

Added 3 days later:

Now our language files are compatible with Transifex and I've written a small guide how to translate them in bulk here.

Added 3 minutes later:

FYI: all the existing and old language files should work just fine without any problems. And nobody is forced to use Transifex, you can continue maintaining language files in your preferred way without much changes.

Added 3 hours later:

I would prefer a relatively popular service though and in the current situation we can't run a self-hosted solution like Weblate, so it is out.

Added 7 hours later:

Crowdin has the same problems as Transifex and adds some more: files for multiple locales cannot be imported correctly, so it's out.

I've solved most of the problems with Transifex, there's one thing left: associative arrays in $L['cfg_somename_params'].

But a certain limitations of Transifex make me doubt in it. And it would be good to hear mentions of a Cotonti community.

Is there any other services we can use?

I checked these services:

http://weblate.org - completelly free, works with git repository. Supported formats: http://docs.weblate.org/en/latest/formats.html  (uses translate-toolkit).
(should be checked for multidimensional arrays, and array-strings)

http://crowdin.net/ - Free for open source. (Unlimited projects, unlimited strings and collaborators). Supports many formats, zip uploading (with directory structure).
Had convinient interface, can parse multidimensional arrays. Seems do not understand string arrays (but I'm not shure). 

Transifex is not a replacement for our traditional file-based translations, it's just a tool to keep them in sync and collaborate. Have a look at their console client tool, I use it to upload/download there our translation files which I edit with my editor offline.

Right, if we decide to use Transifex, I'll make a tool to convert existing langfiles. The changes will affect no more than 10% of all lang strings.

I personally feel more comfortable doing my translations offline using my favorite editor. Can I still work offline and then upload new and changed files to transifex or does this service only support online editing? Furthermore, as a user of screen-reading software I first have to check the service accessibility. Looks good so far, I'm registered there as schulle4u already. If there's an quick and easy way to modyfy my current files to the new array format, I have no problem with transifex migration.

Steffen

It does probably make it easier to maintain the locales in the long run if we use a system like Transifex.
Maybe there are some other alternatives around?

Hello there,

Transifex hosts a lot of PHP projects but, having first searched for similar requests, there is no demand for supporting multi-dimensional arrays. Our roadmap is a really loaded one and we occasionally override the next thing to do if and only if there is a massive request for a particular feature. That said, it's not something that will go live soon but it may be implemented in the future, if a critical mass of requests is reached.

Thank you for your understanding,
Themis

--
The Transifex Team

So we needa change our code and langfiles if we want to use Transifex.

Signed up with the nickname 'Twiebie', so let me know if you can add me to the project.

Added 14 hours later:

Just tried it out a bit and it's looks pretty good.

I really like the way you can easily see which locale is behind and which strings are not up to date. It makes it much easier to keep track of multiple locales.

If we can find solutions to the current problems that Trustmaster detected it looks like a good way forward.

• Online editing of translations only, no need to mess with code.
• Monitoring of translation progress.
• Online collaboration.
• Translation memory database.
• Automatic suggestions.
• Tracking changes between releases.

So I decided to give it a try and created a project for us: https://www.transifex.com/projects/p/cotonti/

Our language files are organized in a more advanced way than in most systems, our language files are modular and spread around many folders, so I had to write some helper tools first: https://github.com/trustmaster/cotlang. I used those tools to separate language files from the source tree and to create Transifex configuration.

I have uploaded RU and NL locales so far and found several problems while uploading our language files. Although most language strings were handled fine, here are the problems that I have detected:

• Formal/informal locales are not supported.
• Syntax with array() like $L['cfg_adminemail'] = array('Administrator\'s email', 'Required'); is not supported.
• Syntax with multiple indexes like $themelang['usersprofile']['Emailpassword'] = 'Your current password'; is not supported.
• Syntax with strings consisting of multiple lines (ending with end-of-line) is not supported.

So if we want our translations to be handled by Transifex, then we need to make changes to our current PHP code and language strings to make all language entries flat.

I have added Russian and Dutch translations so far, let me know if you want to give it a try and send me your username on Transifex and I'll add you to the appropriate team.

Please let me know what you think about the service and the idea of migration to it to handle translations and translation updates.