[Koha-devel] Language overlays or: On the way to finally resolve important translation issues in Koha

[Jonathan Druart]

Hi Marc,

Thanks for the mail :)

Have a look at bug 14100 to know what I have in mind.

Cheers,
Jonathan

2015-04-30 12:07 GMT+02:00 Marc Véron <veron at veron.ch>:
> Dear Koha community,
>
> Koha is translated in almost 50 languages - but it has no possibility to
> switch between languages for authorised values and item types (or more
> generally: database content).
>
> This is a long outstanding issue, see the discussion on Bug 7789
> (2012-03-22). And it is a really painful one for multilingual countries,
> organisations, schools, museums, libraries...
>
> Especially the OPAC looks not very professional when untranslated text
> pops up.
>
> There are several more or less ugly workarounds:
> 1) Have all language versions in the same description, e.g. for OPAC_SUG
> something like
>    "Damaged | Beschädigt | Abîmé"
>    "Upcoming title by popular author | Neuer Titel eines populären Autors
> |Oeuvre... ... ... "
> 2) Have some sophisticated JavaScript tricks
> 3) Have custom Plug-ins
> 5) Locally tweak the code
> 6) Provide custom packages
>
> A couple of days ago I filed Bug 14063 - Implement language overlay for
> authorised values
>
> It is a small, minimal invasive patch (19 lines) that uses additional
> entries in the table authorised_values. To use it, one can simply create
> an additional entry with a trailing language code, e.g. BSELL-de-DE or
> BSELL-fr-FR
> It can be used "As is" without any changes to the database or to the user
> interface.
>
> A similar patch for Item types (Bug 14064) is in preparation.
>
> In comment #5 on Bug 14063, Joubu proposes to have a more generic solution
> with a table with columns "type" column (will contain "authorised_values",
> "item_types", "sysprefs", etc.) and "lang" ('fr-FR', 'de-DE', etc.). The
> complexity will be to implement an ergonomic view to edit the different
> translation.
>
> I totally agree with this. Typo3 CMS, for example, works with such
> language overlays e.g. for page content, and it works great.
>
> I'm best willing to help to implement such a generic solution. However, my
> concern is that it could take a very long time to get there.
>
> Now I have following questions:
> - In what (realistic) timeframe / for what Koha Version could such a
> generic solution be implemented?
> - Based on your experience, what development time would be necessary?
> - Who could contribute to this (time, maybe funding)?
> - What do you think about kind of "Taskforce language overlay"
> - What do you think to have Bug 14063 (Signed-off) and later Bug 14064 as
> a transitory solution to fix the issue for the most exposed places (e.g.
> Search interface in OPAC)? - I know and share concerns about temporary
> solutions, but we simply would need a small SQL script to move the
> language overlays from tables "authorised_values" and "itemtypes" to the
> new overlay table (once the generic solution is ready).
>
> Looking forward to your comments!
>
> Have a great day!
>
> Marc Véron
> (mveron)
>
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