Translation Workflow

This page attempts to define the workflow for migration to the new translation system and for using the new system.

Migration

Urgently required - On all pages, any empty lines below headings should be removed, as it is preferred that a heading is translated at the same time as the first paragraph of its content.
Check that the page has a Category statement as in

[[Category:System]]

   < languages / > 
   < translate >

to the top of the page, and < /translate > at the bottom. There should be no spaces inside the angle-brackets.

Any page that is seen to be seriously and hopelessly out of date should not be marked for translation during the migration period. Those pages can be translated afresh at the later stage.

You must request that your user account is added to the group of Translators. Only listed Translators, logged in, can see the prompts and create translations.
Ensure that a table of Category translated words for your language exists. You can check using the links on http://userbase.kde.org/Translation_Help_Needed
During the migration period it is expected that we will need to keep the old language-bar as well as showing the new one. This will inevitably look a little messy, so we'll keep the period as short as possible. The idea is that you, or anyone with enough understanding of the language to recognise what is being said, can access the old version and simply copy/paste the relevant sections into the new translation page.
Some pages were translated very early on in the life-cycle of KDE 4.x and never updated. It's probably best to ignore these for the first run through, so we will not mark such pages as ready for translation.
If you are fluent in languages other than English, you can take advantage of translations in those languages (if any), by going into your preferences and adding those languages to your list under section Editing.

An English-speaking editor marks the page as ready for translation.
A logged-in Translator sees "Translate this page" at the top of the page.
Clicking on that link takes you to a page, Special:Translate, where you can choose whether to view every section or untranslated sections relating to the page. This is useful if you need to do it in consecutive sessions.
1. You then need to select your language from the drop-down list.
2. Clicking on the first blue link begins the translation process. If you have JavaScript enabled, you will see a dialog that allows you translate each section on at a time.
3. If JavaScript is not enabled or does not work, the first link will go to normal edit page, with some extra features like the source text to translate. You can speed the process by opening multiple pages to browser tabs.
When you have finished, or run out of time for the current session, return to the page with list of sections either by closing the translation dialog or selecting "Return to List" from translation page. You can then use the link above the section list to return to the English page. Your language code will have been added to the list of translations for the page.

The Translate extension offers the possibility of exporting to a .po file which can be used by tools such as Lokalize. If you choose to do it this way, please be aware of the possibility of someone else working on the same page. Unless we come up with a better solution, I'd suggest that we get a template rather like the {{Being_Edited}} one. We have yet to experiment with how this can be achieved, since the page is not created until you actually start the first translation of a page.
You can download the po file by choosing "export in Gettext format" task in the page with list of translatable sections.
To import translations you need to have right XYZ, and then you can go to Speical:ImportTranslations and follow the instructions. We are still working on this part of the process.

At almost all times there will be someone on irc.freenode.net, #kde-www, who can answer questions.