Localisation to more languages [enhancement] about mac-mouse-fix

[noah-nuebling]

Hey there @Svec-Tomas, thanks very much for your feedback!

I definitely agree that the current translation system is not very user friendly, and should be improved.

Thank you for your suggestions! I tested out all the Translation Management Platforms that you mentioned, and while I agree that they among the best on the market, I still didn't like the user experience and workflows all that much, so I was considering implementing a new translation system.

I wrote a draft of a "How To Translate Mac Mouse Fix" tutorial for the new translation system. You can check out the the draft here to get a sense of the new workflow for translators.

If you or anyone has time to look at it, I'd be very interested to hear any critical or positive feedback on this new system from a translators perspective!

Especially how you think it would compare to other translation platforms like CrowdIn would be very interesting to hear.

[Svec-Tomas]

By using Crowdin or other platforms for translation, you don't need to install anything. All you need is to create an account there and you are ready to go and translating using any browser. You can do that from your phone as well. That way more people can collaborate and work on the same language. One can translate, other can proofread and approve translations. Also you have there some already used (suggested) translations for the strings. This way you won't have different translations for the same string. You really need to try it to understand, why most developers go this way. Users get notified about new strings added for translation, at the end it is just sooo much easier to use something like this. Any strings can be commented or asked for explanation, if something is unclear, screenshot can be provided to make it clear where the string is used, etc.

I would really appreciate if Xcode was not needed in the translation process. I believe it is not necessary for translation processes. I understand the need if you are a developer, but really unnecessary and taking up a lot of space just for the purpose of translation.

[noah-nuebling]

Thank you for your feedback @Svec-Tomas!

I'm still tending towards the Xcode solution for now.

I do see that it's a little big of a download (I think 4 GB download but 12 GB install size) but I really like the interface it provides for editing translations. It's very simple and intuitive. It also automatically keeps track of which translations are missing, need to be reviewed, etc. in a simple way. Also, translators can see screenshots of the MMF UI right in the Xcode translation editor - and it even shows a highlight for where exactly the text they are translating appears in the screenshot. And these screenshots are generated completely automatically by Xcode! So I don't have to take new screenshots and annotate them when I change the UI.

(I haven't tested the screesnhot feature, and I can't find many details about it on the web, so I'm not totally sure it works this way. But Apple did talk about this in a WWDC presentation I saw. And if it works this way, it would be really great.)

I can see that the thought of using Xcode can be intimidating, but I promise the UI for translators is quite simple and nice! You won't have to know anything about programming.

Also, I spent a lot of time testing the online translation editors, and I didn't really like the interface and workflows of most of them. And from the crowd-translated projects I looked at, the community and AI features, like comments and suggested translations didn't seem to be widely used or super useful to me.

I had the impression that most of the translations came from a few dedicated users instead of many users who worked collaboratively but only made a small contribution each.

I also feel like that's the best way to get high-quality translations - is to have a few translators who are a bit more dedicated. And so I thought it's ok to make the 'barrier of entry' slightly higher by requiring the Xcode download, and not letting people edit translations on their phone, because I thought the people who are more dedicated wouldn't be deterred by that.

However, I totally might be thinking about this wrong!

So I am also considering the option of moving to Localazy if the Xcode-based approach doesn't work well.

Once I have the Xcode-based system in place, it shouldn't be a lot of work to move everything to Localazy as it integrates with the Xcode translation files quite well, and also has a nice interface. I'd have to pay a monthly fee for Localazy (and for all the other online-translation-systems as well, as far as I understand) but I think it's not too much and would surely be worth it if Mac Mouse Fix keeps selling well.

These are my thoughts so far. But as I said, I might be thinking about this totally wrong, so if you have anything to add, or that you disagree with, please let me know! Thanks again for your feedback and perspective.