How to contribute to the translation of built-in help documentation?

« Teaching with Scratch

6 replies [Last post]

Emre Sevinç

Member

January 08, 2012

Hello,

I don't know whether this is the right sub-forum but I have a question regarding translating the built-in help:

I started to teach a kid and it was great to have the Scratch interface in Dutch but when we try to get help related to various blocks, we saw that the information was only in English. I wonder whether there's a convenient way to add translations to the built-in help system, e.g. by translating it to Dutch.

Replies

Joek van Montfort

Member

April 12, 2012

Dear Emre,

Feel free to contact me through joek at scratchweb dot nl. Maybe we could join forces in translating Scarcth to Duttch.

Best regards, Joek

Emre Sevinç

Member

January 11, 2012

Karen, Amos,

Thank you very much again for the detailed answers and drawing my attention to Scratch 2.0. In this case I think I'll proceed with the current version as it is.

Amos Blanton

Member

January 08, 2012

Hi Emre -

Nice to e-meet you!

As it stands now, there are no plans to release additional versions of Scratch based on the Scratch 1.4 codebase. So it won't be possible for others to download and install a version of Scratch with updated help files until Scratch 2.0 is released - probably in late 2012. However - if you do translate the help files and send them to us, we'll make them available on our Languages resource page:

http://info.scratch.mit.edu/Languages

So it will be possible for people to download your translated help files and manually install them in Scratch 1.4 (replacing the English versions that are included by default). But this must be done manually, so it's not ideal for most end-users.

The good news is that Scratch 2.0 will be all "in the cloud" - meaning it will run in the browser, and won't require Scratchers to download or install anything. This will make it much easier for us to update translations. As soon as we get a new translation, we can make it live in Scratch 2.0.

Hope this helps. Please do let me know if you have additional questions.

Best,

Amos

Karen Brennan

Member

January 08, 2012

That's a great question -- but, unfortunately, I don't know the answer.

It's complicated by the fact that we're working on a major revision to Scratch, which I imagine will impact the translation process.

Let me ask my colleagues, and I (or they) will get back to you!

Emre Sevinç

Member

January 08, 2012

Hello Karen,

Thanks a lot for the pointers, and yes, http://info.scratch.mit.edu/Translation/Translating_Scratch definitely helps. I'm curious about one thing more: Do you have any information about the new version (due to updated translation) release process. In other words, let's assume that I have used the workflow described above and translated the built-in Help into Dutch, how long would it take for the others to be able to download an updated version of Scratch with the updated translation?

Karen Brennan

Member

January 08, 2012

Hi Emre,

Have you looked at http://info.scratch.mit.edu/Translation and http://info.scratch.mit.edu/Translation/Translating_Scratch_Materials? There's more information about the translation process.

Hope that helps,
K