how to use locale files

Ulrich Windl

I'm new to Zotero, and I've inspected the German locale file.
Translations are always a matter of taste, of course, and I modified the file, fixing some minor bugs and matching my preferences.

Now I wonder: What can I do with the modified file: How can I use it in my local Zotero standalone? What is the workflow for suggesting changes to the "official" files?

dstillman

Start here: http://www.zotero.org/support/dev/localization

Ulrich Windl

Well, I don't want to be a full time member of the translation team, just want to share my change proposal with anyone. In a bugzilla-like infrastructure things seem to be easier than with all these forums, portals and clouds...

aurimas

You're welcome to post the suggestions here. I'm sure someone will port them to the appropriate channels.

Ulrich Windl

(As advised, the proposed file can be found on https://gist.github.com/sjvudp/d1531fc898966d0b8702 also)
diff -u locales-de-DE{,-UW}.xml--- locales-de-DE.xml 2014-02-18 15:28:40.000000000 +0100
+++ locales-de-DE-UW.xml 2014-02-18 22:28:52.000000000 +0100
@@ -2,7 +2,7 @@
<locale xmlns="http://purl.org/net/xbiblio/csl" version="1.0" xml:lang="de-DE">
<info>
<rights license="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/">This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License</rights>
- <updated>2012-07-04T23:31:02+00:00</updated>
+ <updated>2014-02-18T21:16:00+00:00</updated>
</info>
<style-options punctuation-in-quote="false"/>
<date form="text">
@@ -160,7 +160,7 @@
<term name="figure" form="short">Abb.</term>
<term name="folio" form="short">Fol.</term>
<term name="issue" form="short">Nr.</term>
- <term name="line" form="short">l.</term>
+ <term name="line" form="short">Z.</term>
<term name="note" form="short">n.</term>
<term name="opus" form="short">op.</term>
<term name="page" form="short">
@@ -199,20 +199,20 @@

<!-- LONG ROLE FORMS -->
<term name="director">
- <single>Regisseur</single>
- <multiple>Regisseure</multiple>
+ <single>Leiter</single>
+ <multiple>Leiter</multiple>
</term>
<term name="editor">
<single>Herausgeber</single>
<multiple>Herausgeber</multiple>
</term>
<term name="editorial-director">
- <single>Herausgeber</single>
- <multiple>Herausgeber</multiple>
+ <single>Herausgebender Leiter</single>
+ <multiple>Herausgebende Leiter</multiple>
</term>
<term name="illustrator">
<single>Illustrator</single>
- <multiple>illustratoren</multiple>
+ <multiple>Illustratoren</multiple>
</term>
<term name="translator">
<single>Übersetzer</single>
@@ -225,16 +225,16 @@

<!-- SHORT ROLE FORMS -->
<term name="director" form="short">
- <single>Reg.</single>
- <multiple>Reg..</multiple>
+ <single>Lt.</single>
+ <multiple>Lt.</multiple>
</term>
<term name="editor" form="short">
<single>Hrsg.</single>
<multiple>Hrsg.</multiple>
</term>
<term name="editorial-director" form="short">
- <single>Hrsg.</single>
- <multiple>Hrsg.</multiple>
+ <single>Hrsg. Lt.</single>
+ <multiple>Hrsg. Lt.</multiple>
</term>
<term name="illustrator" form="short">
<single>Ill.</single>
@@ -246,13 +246,13 @@
</term>
<term name="editortranslator" form="short">
<single>Hrsg. & Übers.</single>
- <multiple>Hrsg. & Übers</multiple>
+ <multiple>Hrsg. & Übers.</multiple>
</term>

<!-- VERB ROLE FORMS -->
- <term name="director" form="verb">directed by</term>
+ <term name="director" form="verb">geleitet von</term>
<term name="editor" form="verb">herausgegeben von</term>
- <term name="editorial-director" form="verb">herausgegeben von</term>
+ <term name="editorial-director" form="verb">herausgegeben und geleitet von</term>
<term name="illustrator" form="verb">illustriert von</term>
<term name="interviewer" form="verb">interviewt von</term>
<term name="recipient" form="verb">an</term>
@@ -262,9 +262,9 @@

<!-- SHORT VERB ROLE FORMS -->
<term name="container-author" form="verb-short">von</term>
- <term name="director" form="verb-short">Reg.</term>
+ <term name="director" form="verb-short">gel.</term>
<term name="editor" form="verb-short">hg. von</term>
- <term name="editorial-director" form="verb-short">hg. von</term>
+ <term name="editorial-director" form="verb-short">gel & hg. von</term>
<term name="illustrator" form="verb-short">illus. von</term>
<term name="translator" form="verb-short">übers. von</term>
<term name="editortranslator" form="verb-short">hg. & übers. von</term>

Ulrich Windl

Some comments on the diffs:
The abbreviation for "Zeile" should be "Z.", not "l."
"director" is not used for movies is better translated as "Leiter" IMHO. This enables a more reasonable translation for
"editorial-director" as well.
"illustrator"'s translation should have capitals.
I'm unsure whether "Lt." is the proper short form for "Leiter", but the multiple had two dots anyway.
I'm unsure when to use &, and when to use "und" (and).
I wonder whether the "SHORT VERB ROLE FORMS" should also abbreviate "von" as "v."...

fbennett

Ulrich,

Sorry to put you to extra trouble, but if you can paste the diff to http://gist.github.com and post the link back here, it will be easier for someone to apply it automatically to the original sources.

adamsmith

You're right on Z. for "line" and the capitalization of "Illustratoren".

"director" is translated correctly as "Regisseur" that's what it's intended for. It's not currently mapped from any Zotero output, so it will never be used, but once it is, it should be translated as "Regisseur". See here: http://aurimasv.github.io/z2csl/typeMap.xml

"editorial-director" refers to the French (and maybe some other countries) distinction between an editor of a collected volume (editorial-director) and the editor of, say, a critical edition (editor). I've never seen that distinction made in German, so the translation should stay Hrsg. (if you check the English translation, it's "editor" for both.

Since those are tiny fixes I'll do them manually, no need to put this up on github.

Rintze

While @adamsmith will handle your proposed changes, the documentation for translating and contributing CSL locale files can be found at http://docs.citationstyles.org/en/latest/translating-locale-files.html . The process for contributing locale files is almost identical to contributing CSL styles (the main difference is the use of the https://github.com/citation-style-language/locales repository instead of https://github.com/citation-style-language/styles/ ).

Ulrich Windl

For the comment by adamsmith:
(See my proposal on also https://gist.github.com/sjvudp/d1531fc898966d0b8702)
If you translate "director" as "Regisseur", I guess you'll have trouble to translate "art director" (and similar) with the existing pattern, but following my pattern it would be "Künstlerischer Leiter". Just to give one example. For those not understanding German, I'd like to point out that "Leiter" in German can mean both, "director" and "ladder" ;-)

adamsmith

there is no reason that the word "director" needs to—or even can be— translated the same way in every context. The "Board of Directors" of a company isn't the "Leiterbrett" but der "Aufsichtsrat" ;) etc.

In the case of movies, plays, etc., director means "Regisseur". Everything other translation would be incorrect. You seem to want to specify a generic "best" translation for the term, but there is no such thing. Translation depends on context and in the context in which the variable/term is to be used, "Leiter" is incorrect. Same for the translation of "editorial-director".

Ulrich Windl

On "translating locale files" suggested by Rintze: Are you aware that there are languages where ordinals can have three (masculine/feminine/neutrum) genders? For example in German: "dritter Mann" (m), "dritte Frau" (f), "drittes Kind" (n) [for the non-German speaking: third man/third woman/third child]
The schema just has:
attribute gender-form { "masculine" | "feminine" }?

adamsmith

Yes, we're aware of this, but it has never come up. Afaik the only current use of this are edition (f) and month/day (m). Given that the additional complexity isn't worth it. In fact, this is so rare that you'll see it's not even implemented in the locale—the feature is a lot more critical to languages like French and Spanish where the short for of ordinals is also gender-corresponding (1er vs. 1re)

Rintze

Neuter forms are supported:

http://citationstyles.org/downloads/specification.html#gender-specific-ordinals

Feminine and masculine variants of the ordinal terms (see Ordinals) may be specified by setting the gender-form attribute to "feminine" or "masculine" (the term without gender-form represents the neuter variant).

adamsmith

sorry, should have checked. Still, has never come up and the long ordinals in the German locales are masculine

adamsmith

Illustratoren and Z. is now up, also capitalized the "N." for the note short form.
@Rintze - what types of notes are we talking here. The current German translation is for a note as in music, which I assume isn't right. But I'm also not sure when "note" in English is ever used as a locator, so I don't know what to replace it with.

Rintze

Perhaps CMoS gives some guidance. See http://xbiblio-devel.2463403.n2.nabble.com/Locators-tp5927057p5927060.html . It might be used for citing foot or endnotes?

adamsmith

Yes, it's for footnotes/endnotes: http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/16/ch14/ch14_sec164.html
Not sure how those would be used in German, probably Fn?

Rintze

You're the expert there :)