Why you should have a Github as a Localization Specialist? abrekkoc, October 13, 2023October 13, 2023 GitHub to me, as a localization specialist and tinkerer with basic programming know-how, is a social media of new horizons. This might sound a bit too ambitious but believe me, the sky (or the amount of repos created) is the limit here. From a technical point of view, GitHub is a code repository system that also enables collaboration, hosting, automation, and version controls. People can create free accounts to access this platform and start interacting with all the public repositories right away or get invited to the private ones. But what do all those things have to do with localization? A LOT! Localization can be associated with all sorts of digital products and services, many of which are being offered in different languages. So, there is a technical process going on behind the scenes and there are different groups of people who witness specific steps of this process. In a very broad sense, these steps can be listed as file preparation, uploading the files to the workspace (i.e. CAT tools), translation, proofreading, adaptation of the localized files to the product, quality assurance and then the finalized product. Most localization specialists are quite familiar with the translation and proofreading parts but the file preparation and implementation parts are not in the broad daylight as much as the aforementioned two. This is where GitHub walks in. Since people can find and interact with ongoing or finalized projects on this platform, localization specialists can browse an open-source web application, website, mobile app, or even games built upon various engines and then observe their structure, how the text data is being passed to the users, where to look for the text and in what forms. A simple example is Twitch Lurker. It is a simple program for making your Twitch account present in many stream chats all at once and does not have many UI elements. Let’s see how the text inside this project can be found. Once the repository page is opened, it is possible to see an overview of the project details and one specific thing helps the localization specialists to determine where to look for text: The language and technologies used to make the project. Since I wrote the documentation for this project, I already know where to look for but for a completely clueless person, the best exploratory method would be to go through all the files and see what they contain, try and find the hints of plain texts or references to files that contain text data. All the projects are different playgrounds for us to discover and learn from, some might feel overly complicated and it is okay to give up trying, or feeling motivated enough to learn more about that specific language or technology. After opening up the Lurker.cs and scrolling down to the 278th line, it is possible to see an example of a plain text called “string”. The text reads “‘Connected to’ + username” and let’s say our username is Abrek. The text will appear as “Connected to Abrek” on the consumer’s screen. Now, the “username” here is what we call a variable and it often appears as a tag in the translation workspaces such as CATs so for a translator, it would appear as “Connected to {1}”. This suggests that the variable is not to be edited but the text can be changed. For this basic example, if we translate the “Connected to” part, compile the code and run it, the consumer will now see the translated text on their screen instead of the English one. In short, the whole idea behind having a GitHub account as a localization specialist is to discover the products and services that we work on and see how they function. Also, it is possible to find several open-source localization tools or specific solutions to the daily problems of a localization professional as regularly maintained repositories. There is even a fully functioning open-source CAT tool called OmegaT. It is possible to learn more about crafting these tools or working on them and then start to contribute to this open-source effort for localization products. Open up an account, start discovering, use forums to find answers, make lots of mistakes struggle to comprehend stuff, and ask unlimited questions. Localization
Somewhere in between burnout and lack of self-discovery October 17, 2023October 17, 2023 I remember the first time I had this interest in localization. I was tinkering with… Read More