
.. _l20n:

Mozilla l20n
************
L20n is a proposed method for localisation in the Mozilla project.
https://wiki.mozilla.org/L20n

.. _l20n#comments:

Comments
========
Here we collect some comments about the possibility of l20n support in our
tools.

Our tools are based on the idea of units. Each unit has an associated (source,
target) pair, possibly containing more, like comments, state, etc. We prefer to
build our richer tools against bilingual formats like :doc:`po`, :doc:`xliff`,
:doc:`ts`, etc. and provide converters to these formats when we want to support
:wiki:`guide/monolingual` formats. Pootle also implements its own bilingual
format in its database.

l20n is based on the idea of entity soup, or object soup. Files are (at least
in the first iteration) monolingual, and each language defines a set of objects
which can contain one or more presentation forms of an entity/string, to vary
it according to gender, case, declension, plural, time of day, etc.  A language
can define extra entities to help in constructing others by "factoring out"
things, if you will. The structure of each object is left to the programmer for
the target language to define.

Findings
--------
Our tools work on the principle of units.  A unit being in its simplest form a
source to target mapping, in other words the English source text plus the
target translation make a unit.  Our code has, for a long time now, a good
understanding of units that don't have a one to one mapping.  In PO those are
plural units.  This is where N source strings map to M target strings.  We
currently only have 1-M and 2-M mappings for Qt and PO files. l20n introduces
N-M mappings which we don't currently support.

l20n is of course working around an idea of translation objects not strings.
But I think the string metaphor works in most cases to ease explanation.

The closest thing we have to this is plural support by means of multistrings.

l20n is pretty powerful with the ability to arbitrarily make up
functions/macros that then map to the correct string to use in the translation.
In PO the number of possible (plural) strings is mapped before you begin, l20n
potentially has any arbitrary mapping.

We could write a simple converter to another format for simple string based
objects without further structure, but that doesn't expose the power of l20n
yet, and doesn't handle complexity in the source text if it was present.

.. _l20n#issues:

Issues
------

- N-M mapping. We need to support arbitrary mappings between source and target
- Determining N and M on the fly.  We need to have the ability to determine N
  and M in real time.  So that would mean being able to read l20n files and
  determine what function is used, then determine how many possible results
  that function can return.  We'd do that for both source and target.  Thus
  we'd get N and M counts which we can use in the interface.
- GUI for Pootle/Virtaal to allow dynamic source and target numbers.  We
  already adapt to N and M on both platforms, but doing this on the fly is
  harder.

  - If we assume that functions are implemented once in a common library and
    named the same (for example for plural support) then this is easy.
  - If functions are arbitrarily implemented per target file but at least named
    the same then this is harder.
  - If names of functions are changed then we'd need to present the ability to
    change the function that a translator would use in their translation.  How
    to do this so that it isn't confusing would require quite some thought.
  - Being able to write functions on the fly within the translation tool would
    most likely be the ultimate ability.  We suspect we won't need to address
    that level just yet.

- Backend file store.  We have two options.

  - Covert to a bilingual store -- this is what we do in moz2po.
  - Support monolingual stores -- we can do that in Pootle, but it needs wider
    testing.  In Virtaal we do automatic conversion to bilingual formats, but
    is is currently disabled.  To enable this so that we can rely on it we'd need
    some work on both Pootle and Virtaal; in testing and in managing source and
    target files changes reliably.

- More complex l20n interactions.  These start pushing the translation tool
  into an IDE but would include:

  - A translator making a 1-1 into a 1-M (to add gender, vary on the time of
    day, platform, etc). Since no functions are present in the source we'd need
    to have access to a library of functions or have a structured object
    editor.
  - A translator might want to define a local entity (an entity which is not in
    the original source document), or it might be there from before.

- Still needs some thought on how to do anything meaningful with our current
  translation features like TM, MT, quality checks.

.. _l20n#approach:

Approach
--------

The problems above really highlight the approach we'd take to implement l20n in
our tools.

- Expand the toolkit to do N-M mapping
- Include l20n parser to allows N and M mapping determination on the fly
- Convert to an interim store.  Before tackling the monoligual side we'd look
  at converting to an interim store to reduce the risks.  We'd determine what
  to use at the time.  The only thing certain is that it would not be PO, as PO
  can't do N source strings.
- GUI changes. This would be to allow N and M to change dynamically.  But we'd
  limit this to at first relying on 1-1 mappings of functions.  Thus plural()
  in source means plural() in target.

At this point we have a usable translation tool for l20n.  The next steps would
be about making that support more robust.  Each of these would really be
determined closer to the time.

- Adaptable N and M.  First allowing functions within a file to adapt the
  values of N and M.
- GUI selection of functions.  Ability to select functions from within the GUI.
- Monolingual on the fly.  We'd then look at the monolingual side of things.
  This would be so that we can work on the source and target without the need
  for the interim store.

We're now really at a position where we've solved things up to point 4 above.
Addressing issues in point 5 and 6 would be the next steps.
