I should have known better, but when I started to take a deep dive into Localizing Rails for the purpose of adding coverage to this in AWDwR3, I thought I could handle translating the dozen and a half phrases that appeared on the website.
That turned out to be much harder than I would have thought.
In high school, I took Spanish from 7th grade through 11th grade, though 11th grade was a disaster. Unbeknownst to me, the teacher decided to go off the published curriculum, and decided that we knew enough of the language, and needed to learn about the culture. And by culture, I’m not talking about the oblique reference to Teen Talk Barbie in the title of this post, I’m talking about long dead poets and artists.
In the intervening years, I’ve lost most of my confidence in my ability to confidently speak the language, but I have retained some ability to read the language.
I should have known better, but when I started to take a deep dive into Localizing Rails for the purpose of adding coverage to this in AWDwR3, I thought I could handle translating the dozen and a half phrases that appeared on the website.
That turned out to be much harder than I would have thought.
The first word was home. Google translate suggested casa. That’s a building. Home pages on the web seem to be more commonly referred to as a pagina inicio, and links to the same are often simply inicio. Initial, start, makes sense.
A cart is either a carro (basket) or a carrito (a little basket). The latter seems slightly more common, so I’m going with that. Links to a contact page sometimes were contacto and other times were contractar (differing in verb tense) but again I’ll go with the more common, which in this case seems to be the former.
Google translate suggested pedir for checkout, which translates back to ask. Looking around, I found references to caja (box) for checking out in a supermarket context, but eventually I settled on comprar (buy).
Blank becomes en blanco which is in white, which gives me pause. Hay que dar is must be given, but generally precedes the noun. Debe ser siempre is a phrase that can be used following the noun. And the context here is a list of fields, each followed by a message.
When I first tried it, I’m pretty sure that place order returned lugar final, which is closer to a final resting place than a submission, but now it seems to be returning the more reasonable realizar el pedido.
When talking about an data entry error that prohibits an order from from being saved, google translate suggests salvado. I want something a bit more... secular. To be fair, saved in English means rescued as well as stored. Se guarde seems like a closer match.
I doubt database fields are campos, I suspect atributos is closer.
For those who want to either poke fun at, or help out, a gringo, here’s my translation file, as well as a screenshot that captures most of the data.
Under the circumstances, book recommendation: Le Ton beau de Marot
One of the most thoroughly enjoyable reads, on the subject of translation.
And yes, it’s hard. :-D
Hi,
Your later screenshot looks mostly alright. Let me correct a little bit:
(note, I speak Spain’s Spanish, which differs from the South American variants- sometimes we sound funny to each other; in Spain we say “coger” for take- in lots of places in South America, “coger” means “have sexual intercourse").
"5 errores impedido este pedido se guarde”
Better: “5 errores han impedido que este pedido se guarde”
“Hay problemas con los siguientes atributos”
Use “campos” instead, it’s perfectly correct
“xxxx debe ser siempre”
Better: “El campo xxx es obligatorio”
“Pagar con no está incluido en la lista”
This I found confusing because it’s not very specific, but the Spanish is perfectly correct.
Also, I would use “Carrito de la compra” as “Shopping Cart”, but then again, I guess all Spanish-speaking countries use different words to say this.
Feel free to drop me an email if you have further doubts.
Cheers,
Alex
Let me correct a little bit
¡Muchas gracias!
Some comments:
A home page is a página de inicio (starting page) or simply inicio (beginning). Carrito de compras (or carrito) is fine, too.
Links to a contact page use either contactar (verb) or contacto (noun).
Pedir means to ask, but also to order (hence el pedido, for the order). A caja in a shopping context is a cash register, or a checkout (the area). Translating checkout as pagar or comprar feels more natural here.
The reason for en in en blanco is that the phrase refers to a state: el campo no puede quedar en blanco means the field cannot stay empty [in a blank state], while el campo no puede quedar blanco means the field cannot stay white [it should be some other color]. The translation here is el campo {{field}} es obligatorio.
Email in Spanish is correo (or correo electrónico). Payment type is better translated as forma de pago; pagar con works for the label, but not for the error message.
Translating Rails apps this way looks to be a lot of pain. Why not use gettext? Am I missing something?
Arien, you seem mostly to be either validating my choices, or reinforcing Alex’s previous input.
I take it that the term for shopping cart has minor variations from region to region. From what I can see on the web carrito de compras is more common than Carrito de la compra, but I had initially marked this translation as es_ES
, so going with what is common in Spain makes sense to me.
I will say that no puede quedar en blanco is appealing to me, as it feels more true to the original. In particular, the original English was can’t be blank, not is required.
Correo may be common in conversation, but E-Mail seems rampant on web-pages (example).
Forma de pago is also appealing; the original English, there is a subtle switch that I missed the first go around. The label is Pay with but the error message refers to Pay type. Even in English, form of payment feels more natural than pay type.
There is some talk about how gettext and Rails 2.2 may be used together, and may ultimately merge.
Sam, I was just trying to give you more context.
Correo (electrónico) is the correct translation, but yes, email is everywhere. (I hadn’t seen e-mail before.)
Not sure if it’s any help, but here’s the Spanish translation file from Satchmo (open-source e-commerce app built in Django). Seems to be a bit of overlap on some of the strings: