Nozbe Translation Platform tips and tricks - your native language in Nozbe

Update (Mar 1, 2010): Just updated the post with another enhancements – you can now see other translators’ suggestions!

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Wow, I’ve been blown away the response to our call for translators – there are lots of folks translating Nozbe to different languages and we are totally excited!

It’s time for some tips and tricks

Today, while I was revising the Spanish translation and translating stuff myself, I found out several glitches in the system (which we’ve already corrected) and some tips and tricks that can help you make the translation even better, so here goes:

Tip 1. Read the string IDs

Each text snippet in Nozbe (called “string”) has its own ID that only Nozbe understands. Just have a look at this example:

As you can see these two strings have the following IDs:
BIZ_ACCOUNTS_LEFT1
and
BIZ_ACCOUNTS_LEFT2

so it’s safe to assume these two strings run one after another, and if you look at the contents of these strings, this makes sense:
You have
??
accounts left

so the sentence like: “you have X accounts left” makes total sense here.

This is why try to look at IDs and don’t translate each string separately but treat them as a whole and translate it in such a way, that the X makes total sense in your language, too. If you know some Spanish, you see I’ve done exactly that.

Tip 2. Mind the HTML

Some strings contain HTML in some places, remember about it and don’t drop it from your translation, try to make it as faithful as possible, just look at this one:

Tip 3. Keep the short strings… short

On the right hand side of each translation you can see a percentage number. If your string is shorter than the original, it’s below 100%, if it’s longer, it’s more.

While in long strings the length in your language doesn’t matter all that much, in short strings it might. So please always seek the shortest phrases possible. Just look at this example:

In Spanish, we could have written “Correo electronico” instead of “E-Mail” but the latter one is simply shorter and everyone understands it anyway, right?

Tip 4. Mind the capital letters

Sometimes the strings in Nozbe start with capital letters and sometimes not. This is on purpose and your translation should reflect that. Just have a look at this example:

Tip 5. Translate GTD-style – one group at a time

We’ve divided the whole translation into groups on purpose. We want to give you and ourselves a feeling of completion when one group is done.

So instead of doing everything at once, just do one group at a time and stop at some today, do others tomorrow. You’ll be very effective and we’ll be happy to have a significant part of the translation job done.

Tip 6 (NEW!). Check out suggestions by others

As the translation platform is growing, several people are submitting their suggestions to our system which resulted in sometimes 4 people working on the same set of translations

We’re working hard on accepting these as quickly as possible, but we’re not there 24/7.

To make sure you work only on the stuff that’s new and don’t submit the same things, you can now see other translators’ suggestions like this:

If the other suggestion is good, just move on to another phrase. Saves you time and makes everyone very productive :-)

Million thanks to everyone who’s helping!

Thank you thank you thank you! It’s incredible how we’re quickly transforming Nozbe from an English-only app to a true international and global GTD app. All contributions are welcome and if you haven’t still joined, watch the video and get going – you can help us bring Nozbe to speak natively your language!

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