Creating a new translation¶

Audience: Writers who would like to create a new Fabric translation.

If the Hyperledger Fabric documentation is not available in your chosen language then why not start a new language translation? It’s relatively easy to get started, and creating a new language translation can be a very satisfying activity for you and other Fabric users.

In this topic, we’re going to cover:

An introduction to international language support
How to create a new language workgroup
How to create a new language translation

Introduction¶

Hyperledger Fabric documentation is being translated into many different languages. For example:

If your chosen language is not available, then the first thing to do is to create a new language workgroup.

Create a new workgroup¶

It’s much easier to translate, maintain, and manage a language repository if you collaborate with other translators. Start this process by adding a new workgroup to the list of international workgroups, using one of the existing workgroup pages as an exemplar.

Document how your workgroup will collaborate; meetings, chat and mailing lists can all be very effective. Making these mechanisms clear on your workgroup page can help build a community of translators.

Then use Rocket chat channels to let other people know you’ve started a translation, and invite them to join the workgroup.

Create a new translation¶

Follow these instructions to create your own language repository. Our sample instructions will show you how to create a new language translation for Spanish as spoken in Mexico:

Fork the fabric-docs-i18n repository to your GitHub account.

Clone your repository fork to your local machine:

git clone git@github.com:YOURGITHUBID/fabric-docs-i18n.git

Select the Fabric version you are going to use as a baseline. We recommend that you start with Fabric 2.2 as this is an LTS release. You can add other releases later.
```
cd fabric-docs-i18n
git fetch origin
git checkout release-2.2
```
Create a local feature branch:
```
git checkout -b newtranslation
```
Identify the appropriate two or four letter language code. Mexican Spanish has the language code es_MX.

Update the fabric CODEOWNERS file in the root directory. Add the following line:

/docs/locale/ex_EX/ @hyperledger/fabric-core-doc-maintainers @hyperledger/fabric-es_MX-doc-maintainers

Create a new language folder under docs/locale/ for your language.
```
cd docs/locale
mkdir es_MX
```
Copy the language files from another language folder, for example
```
cp -R pt_BR/ es_MX/
```
Alternatively, you could copy the docs/ folder from the fabric repository.
Customize the README.md file for your new language using this example.

Commit your changes locally:

git add .
git commit -s -m "First commit for Mexican Spanish"

Push your newtranslation local feature branch to the release-2.2 branch of your forked fabric-docs-i18n repository:

git push origin release-2.2:newtranslation


Total 0 (delta 0), reused 0 (delta 0)
remote:
remote: Create a pull request for 'newtranslation' on GitHub by visiting:
remote:      https://github.com/YOURGITHUBID/fabric-docs-i18n/pull/new/newtranslation
remote:
To github.com:ODOWDAIBM/fabric-docs-i18n.git
* [new branch]      release-2.2 -> newtranslation

Connect your repository fork to ReadTheDocs using these instructions. Verify that your documentation builds correctly.
Create a pull request (PR) for newtranslation on GitHub by visiting:

https://github.com/YOURGITHUBID/fabric-docs-i18n/pull/new/newtranslation

Your PR needs to be approved by one of the documentation maintainers. They will be automatically informed of your PR by email, and you can contact them via Rocket chat.
On the i18n rocket channel request the creation of the new group of maintainers for your language, @hyperledger/fabric-es_MX-doc-maintainers. Provide your GitHubID for addition to this group.

Once you’ve been added to this list, you can add others translators from your workgroup.

Congratulations! A community of translators can now translate your newly-created language in the fabric-docs-i18n repository.

First topics¶

Before your new language can be published to the documentation website, you must translate the following topics. These topics help users and translators of your new language get started.

Fabric front page

This is your advert! Thanks to you, users can now see that the documentation is available in their language. It might not be complete yet, but its clear you and your team are trying to achieve. Translating this page will help you recruit other translators.

Introduction

This short topic gives a high level overview of Fabric, and because it’s probably one of the first topics a new user will look at, it’s important that it’s translated.

Contributions Welcome!

This topic is vital – it helps contributors understand what, why and how of contributing to Fabric. You need to translate this topic so that others can help you collaborate in your translation.

Glossary

Translating this topic provides the essential reference material that helps other language translators make progress; in short, it allows your workgroup to scale.

Once this set of topics have been translated, and you’ve created a language workgroup, your translation can be published on the documentation website. For example, the Chinese language docs are available here.

You can now request, via the i18n rocket channel, that your translation is included on the documentation website.

Translation tools¶

When translating topics from US English to your international language, it’s often helpful to use an online tool to generate a first pass of the translation, which you then correct in a second pass review.

Language workgroups have found the following tools helpful: