How best to install 54 language packs to new forum?

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JimA
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Re: How best to install 54 language packs to new forum?

Post by JimA »

There's no difference in how language packs are treated. There have just been lots of additional strings added, existing strings changed and other strings that became redundant removed.

Given the magnitude of these changes, it would already take a lot of time for one language pack author to incorporate them all. So needless to say it would become a close to impossible operation for you to update about thirty of them. That's even besides the fact that if you're using Google Translate to do it, you might as well not do it at all because all you'll get are translations that at best sound wrong and at worst become incomprehensible to native speakers anyway. ;)
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Sean Moran
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Re: How best to install 54 language packs to new forum?

Post by Sean Moran »

all you'll get are translations that at best sound wrong and at worst become incomprehensible to native speakers anyway
I think you're right, mate. I could use Moses, which would probably be much the same (if not more open-source) than what facebook uses for the somewhat unreliable transations which we are suffering under currently. One of my best friends seems to frequently refer to me as 'Maxine' and my name is Sean, (and I am a boy too), so it would be preferable if some multilingual people could indulge the time to update the 3.1 language packs to please 3.2.0. I have looked at the criteria for language packs, and there is a long file list to conquer by the look of it, even without the need for Google.

I would still like to give it a try, and I have been thinking about it last night. I wonder why it would be a waste of time to compare the en (English English) language pack for 3.1 with that of 3.2, and somehow deduce from there what the difference is, and then have a crack at recreating that same difference in th, and then bn, and go from there, over time, as the need arises.

This PHP dilemma with 3.1.10 comes as a bit of a mega-surprise, and I will sleep tonight, and think about how I might somehow manage to update one of the 3.1 compatible language packs to 3.2, (from en to en), because I would rather have my online forum the same as the test/development forum I keep on the localhost, so that I can better solve online problems as they will inevitably arise.

I will have a better look at the previous 3.1 en language pack configuration tomorrow, and see how it compares to the 3.2 version, and that will be a Sunday well spent, to determine whether it is worth trying to build 3.2 language packs from the ones which work on 3.1.

Good night JimA. I will know by Monday morning which phpBB version to use for the 2018 forum.
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Re: How best to install 54 language packs to new forum?

Post by Sean Moran »

PS: Just an afterthought before bedtime, JimA. Moses can use a couple of parallel corpora from KDE and Ubuntu which might be able to (with the help of, say the UDHR parallel corpus) produce fairly close translations which would work reasonably well with the phpBB vocabulary.

Bear in mind that we are not trying to translate colloquial slang, but only the text of the phpBB software. Post translations are left to Google, so let them eat cake! They get what they pay for. This is just to translate the text of phpBB into fifty-four(54) languages, and phpBB text is entirely formal English. A statistical machine translator (SMT) could manage formal English satisfactorily, I reckon.

This is not impossible, just difficult.
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david63
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Re: How best to install 54 language packs to new forum?

Post by david63 »

I believe that the easiest way to update language files is with a three way comparison/merge program.
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Sean Moran
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Re: How best to install 54 language packs to new forum?

Post by Sean Moran »

Thanks again David. I am not familiar with the idea of a three-way comparison/merge program, Would it be possible to elaborate on how such a program works, and perhaps a link for a Github download for Linux?
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david63
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Re: How best to install 54 language packs to new forum?

Post by david63 »

With a three way comparison/merge you would have 3.1.10 in one panel, 3.2.0 in another panel and that would highlight the differences between 3.1 and 3.2. In the third panel you would then have your language file so you could see what to remove, what had changed and what needed adding.

It is a long time since I have been looking for comparison/merge programs so I don't know what is currently around but I am sure that Mr Google will be able to come to your aid. From what I recall there were no open source/free programs and the ones that were available were not cheap.

I believe that one of the better programs is Araxis Merge, but I am sure that there are other offerings out there.
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Re: How best to install 54 language packs to new forum?

Post by Sean Moran »

Thanks again for helping me with my dilemma. I visualised that screen from the Google Translate web page, which I occasionally use when facebook lets me down, with the two panels and I am still not sure of what a three-way system does, but I imagine some kind of parallel and target corpora in the background to authenticate and improve on the translated text.

I am probably still wrong, but in any case, it seems like an expensive solution, of some kind of commercial nature, and I don't ask for money from my friends, so there is not much of that stuff around to pay for anything much. I have to pretty much do it myself, because my time is much more affordable than most of us in this so-called 'Western World' as I suppose the New Zealanders call us Aussies. :lol:

The concept is something that I believe that I can do with Moses. I have a 4-core i7 Toshiba laptop with 16GB of RAM, and plenty of time to sit back and watch the wheels, and I already pay for the web-site with its domain name. Anything else which costs me money would defeat the purpose of building a phpBB forum. I may as well pay for gold-plated IPB and get my 54 languages for free, eh?

Nope, it is a good hint, David, but I have to do it myselt, with open-source software (eg. Moses or Moses2) or else start some porn site just to pay for the cost of keeping it, and then there would be no need for translation because .JPGs span across all languages.

If it can be done, then I will find some way to do it. I don't need to beg for anymore help here, on the difference between 3.1. and 3.2, because it is all there in the code, I am sure. It will just take me some time to work out what that difference is, and why all 54 languages install in 3.1, but some of them crash the system on 3.2.
I'll see what I can find out tomorrow, and when I work out what the extra changes are, I'll concoct some way of using the KDE, Ubuntu and the UDHR corpora to train Moses to translate whatever sentences there maybe in the 3.2 language packs which were not necessary in 3.1.

Thanks all the same, mate. We can't afford to buy commercial software, my friends and I.
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