The state of website translations

[Runa A. Sandvik]

Hi everyone,

This email is long overdue, but the goal is that you will get a better
look at how website translations make it from the translation portal
and on to the website. This email will also explain why some of the
translated pages show outdated information.

When someone translates a file for the website on
https://translation.torproject.org/, that file is stored as .po.
Before the translation can make it on to the website, the file has to
be converted to .wml. However, the translated .po will only be
converted if 80% or more has been translated. If the translation
cannot be converted, the file that is used as fallback when building
the website is the version that was last successfully converted to
.wml and added to the repository.

At the moment, we have 584 .wml files in the repository that make up
the website, including the original English pages. If we were to
remove the translated .wml files from the repository, and only convert
them before building and pushing the website, we would have 334 .wml
files (again, also including the original English pages).

The plan is that we will, starting when the new website is released
(hopefully in not too long), not keep translated .wml files in the
repository and only convert them before building the website. This may
give us less translated files than we have right now, but at least the
pages will be more up to date. If anyone wants to start doing this
today with the current website, let me know.

Thanks,

-- 
Runa A. Sandvik