Internationalization
This page is about internationalization of MetaBrainz projects, that is making these usable with different languages and in different regions. The main section below is about translation of its software’s user interface, that is translating messages from software in different languages. The rest is about more general issues such as correctly handling data from different languages and different regions for example.
Translation
This section is intended for translators of projects related to the MetaBrainz community, it isn’t limited to official projects maintained by the Foundation.
Platform
The translation platform is open to registration through your MusicBrainz account. It is currently hosted by the Weblate team with a data processing agreement in conformity to the GDPR. Note that the legal terms are generic to all Weblate instances and that “purchase” isn’t available from MetaBrainz Weblate instance.
See Weblate user docs for a general introduction on how to use it for translating.
Projects
Each of translation projects has an “Info” tab linking to a wiki page that gathers project-specific information for translators and more generally about internationalization.
Note: The following official MetaBrainz projects aren’t translatable at the moment: BookBrainz, Cover Art Archive, and ListenBrainz. The archived projects AcousticBrainz and MessyBrainz have never been (and won’t ever be) translatable.
Languages
Among all the languages supported by Weblate very few might be actually active, you can find it out from their “Information” tab.
If a language is not available for a project you want to translate, just ask for it on the “Internationalization” community forum category.
To help with coordinating translations in the same language, you can use Weblate glossaries and comments, MetaBrainz community forums (with appropriate categories and tags), and wiki page (create one if missing):
Beyond translation
Forums
Discourse’s user interface is localized.
- The few topics writen in a language other than English uses tags such as "
lang:ab" for now.
There is a topic about making this practice official. - Pinned welcome topics are not localized, the same topic is also about localizing welcome topics.
- Categories, tags and some semi-static texts are not localized. The Multilingual Plugin is a potential solution to be investigated.
- Content is not translated. If the above multilingual plugin doesn’t solve it, Translator Plugin could be considered.
Tickets
Jira’s user interface is localized.
Note that the content doesn’t have to be localized since English is the work language for the MetaBrainz team. (Tickets reported in another language would probably be translated in English and replied in both languages.)
Wiki
MediaWiki’s user interface is localized but not the content which is generally assumed to be in English with a few exceptions such as language translation project pages.
We gave up using the Content translation tool due to incompatibilities at that time and inability to ensure consistency with other translations unless using Translate extension instead of Transifex or Weblate; See comments to jira:OTHER-350 for details.
Questions or problems
To discuss about:
- Project-specific translation: Use the “translation” forum tag in the category for that project.
- Project-specific internationalization: Use the “internationalization” forum tag in the category for that project.
- General translation/internationalization: Use the “Internationalization” forum category with the appropriate tags.
To report problems:
- Search for tickets with “internationalization” label and create a new ticket if not found.
For more real-time interactive conversation with developers, you’re welcome to ask in the #metabrainz IRC channel.
