Translating Teambox

Teambox is now available in English, Spanish, French (thanks, Diane!), Italian (thanks, Valeria!) and German (thanks, Armin!).

Would you like to see Teambox in your language, too? It’s easy!

Translating Teambox to your language will take you about 2 hours. That’s like watching a movie. Follow this guide:

1. First, let us know what you are going to do. We’ll help you!
2. Next, read the guides below to know how to translate the app.
3. Once the translation is ready, send it to us and we’ll add it to Teambox!

Optional: If you’re a technical person, you can test your translation:

1. Deploy Teambox locally. Read the installation guide
2. Create a language file, like config/locales/xx.yml
3. Add your language to LANGUAGES in app/models/user.rb
4. Restart the server.
5. Now you can choose your new language from your user’s settings.

Workflow

Every string in Teambox that needs to be translated is contained in special translation files. There is only one file for each language.

Teambox currently supports English and Spanish as locales. Any more can be added simply.

To begin a translation, you must simply translate en.yml to your chosen language and send it to us. Click “raw” on the page to download the file to your computer.

Read below for more instructions and conventions.

Recommended editors

The recommended editors for the translation files are:

• Notepad++ for Windows.
• TextMate for Mac.
• You probably have your favorite if you’re on Linux :)

Structure of the Translation file

Translation files are made so they match line by line with each other. It’s not allowed to move lines around or insert blank lines. Set soft tabs to 2 spaces in your editor.

Each lines matches a text string in Teambox’s interface. They are indented to keep structure, don’t mess with the indentation.

Below I’m posting an example. Most blocks start with the controller name, here projects. This means the text contained belong to the Projects section. After, they have the action, here index. Actions are usually index (list all), show (view one), new, edit.

projects:

  index:

    title: News feed for all your projects

    projects: My Projects

Special symbols in strings

In a translation, there are two parts: the identifier and the translated text.

title: Create an Account

Here, title is the identifier. It must not be changed. Create an Account is the translated string, which must be substituted for each language.

The translated string can be surrounded by single or double quotes if it contains strange characters.

A translated string must be surrounded by quotes if it contains a comma (,) or any special characters.

Symbols like <b>, <br>, and others are there for style. They shouldn’t be translated.

Symbols like } or } indicate that part is to be replaced by a dynamic value. They should not be translated.

Lines starting with # indicate they are comments, used only for documentation purposes. They should not be translated.