Translation

Translation Principles

The following principles were used to guide the design of a translation system for CS Unplugged:

  1. Translations should be ‘first class citizens’ - they should exist as independent entities from the source content, and be coupled as loosely as possible to it.

  2. Translated content should remain accessible even if the source material changes, and an updated translation is not yet available.

  3. Users should be able to see all content that exists, even if it is not available in their language.

  4. Translated content should be presented solely in the users language, without being interspersed with English.

Translatable Files

Translatable content is stored in four types of files:

  • Markdown files, for content to be processed by Verto.

  • YAML files containg field translations for a given model type.

  • HTML templates.

  • Python code.

The first two types of file are stored inside the directory tree for a given language (ie. the directory named using the Django locale code).

Note

YAML translation files must contain translations for only one model type, but may contain translations for multiple instances of that model, and for multiple fields.

They are structured as follows

<object-slug-1>:
    <field-1>: <translated value for field-1>
    <field-2>: <translated value for field-2>
<object-slug-2>

For example, the following snippet is from the YAML translation file for all classroom resources

pens:
  description:  Pens
paper:
  description:  Paper
number-line-0-20:
  description:  Number line from 0 to 20

It is important to note that these YAML files are separate from configuration files, which are located in the structure directory.

These files can be parsed and loaded using a utility function on the TranslatableModelLoader base class.

For the latter two type of files, Django’s built-in translation support is utilised to handle translatable strings. In Python code, text is wrapped in a ugettext function call (usually aliased to _). In HTML templates, text is wrapped in {% trans %}/{% blocktrans trimmed %} tags.

Translatable Model

The TranslatableModel class is a base model class that allows content to be stored using the above principles. It is availabe in the file utils/TranslatableModel.py and should be subclassed by all models which contain any user facing content.

Django Package - modeltranslation

The Django modeltranslation package is utilised to stored translated content on a model. The basic idea is that for each translatable field, an extra database column is added for every language defined in the Django settings file. When the base field is accessed, modeltranslation performs some magic to retrieve the translation for the users language

To register translation fields for a given TranslatableModel, add a TranslationOptions subclass to the translations.py file in the relevant application. For more details, see the models already registered, or read the modeltranslation docs.

Note

The default behaviour for modeltranslation is to fallback to the English value if no translation is present. In CS Unplugged, this is desirable for text fields such as name and title, but is often undesirable for most other fields (see Translation Principles).

To disable fallback for a given field:

  • Add <field name>: None to the fallback_undefined dictionary in the models TranslationOptions subclass.

  • Add default="" option to the field in it’s models.py definition.

Available Languages

The TranslatableModel base class includes a mechanism to determine whether a model sufficiently translated and available in a given language.

This mechanism consists of

  • The languages field, which is an array field storing the Django language codes for languages in which the model is available

  • The translation_available property, which returns true if the model is available in the current language

When creating the TranslatableModel instance, the list of available languages should be determined. This will likely be decided using a list of required fields, where the presence of translations for all required fields leads to the model being marked as available. The TranslatableModelLoader base class includes functions to assist with this task

In view and template code, the translation_available property can be checked to determine the presentation of translated content (or lack thereof) on the front end.

Translatable Model Loader

The TranslatabaleModelLoader base class should be subclassed by all loaders that deal with translatable models. It provides a number of helper functions for dealing with translated content. It is availabe in the file utils/TranslatableModelLoader.py.

Utility Functions

The following utility functions are available:

  • get_yaml_translations - Load translations for model fields from a given YAML file

  • get_markdown_translations - Load translations for a given Markdown file

  • populate_translations - Populate translation fields on a model using values in a given dictionary

  • mark_translation_availability - Modify languages field to contain all languages for which all required translation fields are populated

Refer to the function docstrings for more detailed documentation. It may also be useful to refer to existing loader implementations to understand how these functions can be used.