Language Localization for Engelsystem

Post author:Dishant Khanna
Post published:June 12, 2016
Post category:FOSSASIA

Localization takes place when you adapt content to a specific location. In translation, it means that your content can be read by another in their native language with as much ease as if the information were written in that language to begin with. In other words, just translating a document does not mean that it has been localized. When it is your brand, information, or material at stake, it is important to understand the elements that separate a mere translation from the language localization necessary to maximize impact with your target audience.

Some Examples of Localized Content

Understanding excellent localization may be easier with some positive examples.

Google is the search engine of choice in much of the English-speaking world. It accounts for only one percent of the search market in China, however. Baidu gives Chinese users the look and feel that they understand. Has Google given up? Hardly, they are working on improving the localization of their content.

Many television and phone manufacturers compete for the French markets. Samsung is made in Korea, but they marketed themselves according to the French tastes and desires. The manufacturer stressed the artistic design and high definition of its televisions. Their phones were tailored to the French market with apps specifically designed for the French lifestyle and location of the users.

Packaging is very important to an American consumer, even with toiletries; it is not very important at all to Chinese consumers. Proctor and Gamble localized their product marketing for Crest toothpaste by reducing their packaging costs and focusing on the flavors, which the Chinese do value. The localization not only increased their market share but cut their costs by 50 percent.

Remember, the purpose of localization is to give your text or product the impression that they were designed or written specifically for that market regardless of the language, culture, or location.

Understanding the Localization Process in Translation

Within the world of translation, localization includes a number of critical elements such as:

Modification of grammar, punctuation, and lexical elements
Adaptation of formality and other culturally-based items of etiquette
Ensuring figurative language is replaced with localized idioms and metaphors
Making sure content is culturally sensitive and relevant
Aligning conversions such as money, time, dates, voltages, and so forth
Formatting numbers, values, and so on according to local variations
Verifying the text and format meet legal requirements

In order to localize content, the translator must have a comprehensive understanding of the culture, the language, and the specific field the information references. Note, in the list above, those cultural adaptations are as important to the translation as lexical and grammatical issues. Local sensitivities must be considered to avoid conflicts with culture, customs, or habits.

Some specific items that might be tailored to the local populace are references to political leaders or situations that are deemed offensive (think about China and Taiwan), animals (rats are looked upon favorably in china as is the chicken), flowers, gestures, shoes (wearing shoes inside can be taboo), gum (illegal in Singapore), meats (think about Kosher or Halal ideals, vegetarianism is also stressed in some places), smoking (banned for Sikhs), and bodily functions (what is funny or cute for some is offensive to others).

If your documents, texts, or project will be going to several locations and translated into several local languages, you might want to consider “internationalizing” it first. This is the process of highlighting or adjusting any questionable text or ideas in advance to save the translator’s time when preparing it for the local dialect. The process is most effective when done during the formulation stages of the document, but it can be done later as well. For papers that are going to be translated into multiple languages, the time and expense that could be saved through this step are tremendous.

Whether your documents go through an intermediary step or are translated straight to a local language, it is imperative that your translation service understands the importance of an exhaustive and thorough localization process.

When selecting translation services, one of the most important questions you can ask is whether or not you want your documents prepared for internationalization or localization.

Localization is the process of translating a document or project for use within a specific target market. Localization includes all of the components of translation required to meet cultural and linguistic adaptations of text. Localization can be accomplished from an original source text, or from a test that has been prepared for international translation.

Internationalization is the process of preparing a document or project to be used anywhere in the world and localized as necessary. The process of creating a document that is bothlinguistically deliverable and culturally sensitive for a worldwide audience is not easy or quick. Yet, when internationalization takes place during the initial stages of product development it is far easier than trying to work backwards, and a document that has been successfully internationalized can be quickly and easily localized.

Understanding the Elements

Some of the elements that are impacted during the internationalization or localization process include:

Formatting: Not everybody formats their date the same way. Time signatures are also not universal. Even numbers are not standard. Deciding where to put colons, commas, symbols and the like will make a huge difference in the readability of your final document.
Symbols/Abbreviations: English speakers often do not realize that their symbols are not universal. When symbols are used in text, they can take on many different meanings based upon the target language. Other times, the symbol may have no meaning at all, in which case the intent of the content will have been lost without a proper translation. Consider such a simple abbreviation as E. for east: since the German word for east is osten, east would be O. Even if we agreed to use metric vs imperial or American units, a square kilometer (sq km) would be a German Quadratkilometer or qkm.
Gender: English does not assign gender to most items, Spanish and French assign gender to just about everything, Japanese has gender, but also special rules for adults and children.
Graphics:Items that are just fine in one culture may be meaningless in another culture, or, worse, offensive and derogatory. For example, the stork delivers babies in many cultures; however, in Japan, a stork and baby will not have the same meaning. Colors also have different meanings in different cultures. Not everybody associates white with purity, weddings, and truth.
Legal Requirements: who has to sign documents, where do signatures go, are witnesses required, who is allowed to be a witness, and so forth. If you are doing business in an international community, these are essential elements of translation.

Why Internationalization or Localization is so Important

If your document is going to go to one region or local, and only one region or local, direct translation into the target text is the cheapest and most expedient way to translate your document. However, suppose you have a document that is going to be translated into 10, 20, even 50 different languages.

While you could hire a unique translator for each language independent of all others, another approach would be to go through the internationalization process. During this process, translators would create a master document that addresses the main elements that would be difficult to translate. They would standardize the elements that could be standardized, and highlight those ideas which are going to need more elaboration by a local translator. This way, when the translators who will be working on the localized documents start their translations, much of the groundwork has already been done for them.

When choosing a translation service, you will want to know the number of target languages. If you only have one or two, you may be better off going with a straight translation; however, if you are going to be addressing multiple languages (even many within the same family: Mexican Spanish, Puerto Rican Spanish, Argentinian Spanish, Andalusian Spanish) you may be able to save considerable time.

During the 3rd week of my Summer of Code, I’ve implemented localization on Engelsystem. Users can get more information on my previous blog post, here.

In the later weeks, other developers and I would be working on adding more languages to the system. Anyone who would like to work in the project are welcome. Developers can feel free to take up any issues they would like to work on just like any other open source projects.

Development: https://github.com/fossasia/engelsystem Issues/Bugs:https://github.com/fossasia/engelsystem/issues

Language Localization on Engelsystem

Post author:Dishant Khanna
Post published:June 12, 2016
Post category:FOSSASIA

During the 3rd week of my Summer of Code, I worked on implementing Localization of different languages on the system and creating a different settings page for user and admin.

One of our goals is for Engelsystem to be a great experience for users worldwide. To achieve this goal we need to make some significant changes. The main reason of localization is that it can be used by different people with different native languages across the world and help them to understand the system better .

First, a little background.

Right now, Engelsystem has two localization systems available:

Deutsch
English

All of the current translations will be updated. We are also expanding the list of supported languages to as many as we can. Currently, I’ve implemented:

Bulgarian
Chinese- simplified
English UK
French
Hindi-IN
Hungarian
Irish
Punjabi-IN
Spanish
Tamil-IN

The tools used in implementing localization are poedit where we create the .po files .

For installing Poedit on Linux distro’s, users can use the following command in the terminal,

sudo apt-get install poedit

For Windows and Mac users, they can download the executable file here.

Steps to run Poedit in Linux/Windows/Mac:

choose File → New Catalog.Enter the details in Translation properties like your email. Source code charset should be selected as UTF-8.Now the source path should be selected as (.) dot to tell Poedit to search for PHP files in the same folder.
In the source, there are three options ‘_’ , ‘gettext’ and ‘gettext_noop’.Make sure all necessary functions are added and press OK.
Now we can see the list of strings on left and their translated strings on the right.we need to install the necessary dictionary for this.
Save the file with an extension ‘.po’ .
In Engelsystem, to implement the translated localization file we need to make the changes in the file,internationalization_helper.php
```
$locales = array(
‘de_DE.UTF-8’ => “Deutsch”,
‘hi_IN.UTF-8’ => “Hindi”,
‘sp_EU.UTF-8’ => “Spanish”,
‘en_US.UTF-8’ => “English”
);
```
During the week 3 of my Summer of Code I also worked on creating different settings page for user and Admin. Earlier settings page for user and admin were same, providing same privileges to both of them. Now we have separate pages for both.

User Settings

Admin Settings

In the later weeks, other developers and I would be working on adding more languages to the system. Anyone who would like to work in the project are welcome. Developers can feel free to take up any issues they would like to work on just like any other open source projects.

Development: https://github.com/fossasia/engelsystem Issues/Bugs:https://github.com/fossasia/engelsystem/issues

New Color Schemes in Engelsystem

Post author:Dishant Khanna
Post published:June 4, 2016
Post category:FOSSASIA GSoC

Engelsystem is a well-built MVC application. It seems to have everything an event manager could want. During the Week 2 of my Summer of Code, I worked on creating new color schemes/themes for the system. Engelsystem initially had 4 color schemes:

Engelsystem cccamp15
Engelsystem 32C3
Engelsystem Dark
Engelsystem Light

Color wields enormous sway over our attitudes and emotions. When our eyes take in a color, they communicate with a region of the brain known as the hypothalamus, which in turn sends a cascade of signals to the pituitary gland, on to the endocrine system, and then to the thyroid glands. The thyroid glands signal the release of hormones, which cause fluctuation in mood, emotion, and resulting behavior.

Research from QuickSprout indicates that 90% of all product assessments have to do with color. “Color,” writes Neil Patel, is “85% of the reason you purchased a specific product.” It’s a no-brainer fact of any website that color affects conversions. Big time.

So, the bottom line is: use the right colors, and you win.

Color schemes lets the user to set the system looks (i.e how the system will appear) which the user likes. During the week 2 of my Summer of Code, I worked on implementing 2 new color schemes for the system:

Engelsystem color scheme-1
Engelsystem color scheme-2

In the later weeks, other developers and I would be working on creating more themes and enhancing them. Anyone who would like to work in the project are welcome. Developers can feel free to take up any issues they would like to work on just like any other open source projects.

Development: https://github.com/fossasia/engelsystem Issues/Bugs:https://github.com/fossasia/engelsystem/issues

Engelsystem: Enhancing security in registration form

Post author:Dishant Khanna
Post published:May 31, 2016
Post category:FOSSASIA

My first impression when looking at the PHP application (Engelsystem) was that it is a well-built MVC app. It seems to have everything an event manager could want. But the security implemented in the registration form was not good.

Registration forms are a great way to follow up people’s interest in what you are offering on your website and with these tools you are able to make sure it is done right. Unfortunately, registration forms can be a large source of a sender acquiring bounced addresses and Spam Traps which could cause your business to spam a hosts mailbox without proper validation of addresses. This can reflect poorly in your SendGrid internal reputation as well as reflect poorly upon your business. Fortunately, there are many helpful techniques that can help a sender avoid many of the issue that can come up through their registration form.

A registration from should ask for complete information about the user to ensure that the user registering for the service is not fake.

Sometimes in the registration process, a person makes a mistake in entering their email such as person@domain.coom or person@@domain.com. By entering the email address twice and having a system in place that checks that the addresses match up, the person entering their email address has a much smaller chance of accidentally entering an invalid address.

A good technique in protecting your registration form from bots is placing a required Captcha in the form:

A Captcha is a test to ensure that form is filled out by a human being as opposed to a bot. The image is not replicable by a bot but easily replicated by a human being.

One common issue that arises with email registration forms is people registering false or fake addresses. To prevent this, the form can say that the service is not granted unless they confirm via email that they would like the service. This can be done with a Double Opt-In Email, confirming that their address exists. A double opt-in email not only helps ensure that there is an actual human being registering but also validates that the recipient did indeed sign up for your registration.
There are many great techniques available to protect your registration form but a balance must be created between user friendliness and security. Some forms have many required fields in registering as well as checks to make sure that the form is filled out correctly. Too many fields can drive away potential interest in your site or product. One way to balance out the registration process is to have other information about the person be collected on a landing page after the registration form is done. This serves to be both user friendly as well as allow you to collect valuable information.

In my first week, I enhanced the registration form, adding new fields and marking some fields as important.

Development: https://github.com/fossasia/engelsystem Issues/Bugs:https://github.com/fossasia/engelsystem/issues

Deploy Engelsystem on Your Local Server

Post author:Dishant Khanna
Post published:May 20, 2016
Post category:FOSSASIA

Today, I decided to set up Engelsystem on a clean local server as a task for Google Summer of Code. My first impression when looking at the PHP application was that it is a well-built MVC app. It seems to have everything an event manager could want. When I looked at the README, all the instructions were in German, but I decided to follow the gist of it anyways. I will be telling you how to setup the application step by step in English on Ubuntu 15.10 x64.

Instructions for Setup

Step 1: Setup LAMP and install GIT

The first you want to do is to setup LAMP stack (linux, apache, mysql, and php). Please follow the tutorial here on how to set up LAMP on Ubuntu 15.10 x64. If you are running this app on a different operating system, a quick Google search will provide you with installation steps.

Afterwards, you may install git by these commands:

apt-get update
apt-get install git -y

Step 2: Clone the Repository and Setup Database

First, clone the repository (the recursive parameter allows us to clone the submodules):

git clone --recursive https://github.com/engelsystem/engelsystem.git

Note the absolute path of the Engelsystem directory. For example, mine is /root.

Next, configure your MySQL Engelsystem database:

mysql -u root -p
[Enter your password]
CREATE DATABASE engelsystem;
use engelsystem;
source [path to engelsystem]/engelsystem/db/install.sql;
source [path to engelsystem]/engelsystem/db/update.sql;
exit;

Go to engelsystem/config and copy the default config into config.php. Modify the new file to match your MySQL credentials so that the system could access the database on the localserver.

Step 3: Test That App is Working

Move the app to your /var/www/html/ directory by typing mv ./engelsystem /var/www/html (alternatively create a symlink to your current directory). Go to your browser and type in [serverhost]/engelsystem/public to see the application in action.

To login, type use the following credentials:

Username: admin
Password: asdfasdf

Be sure to change your password for security reasons. You can generate a strong password here.

Step 4: Modify Apache to Use Server for Production

We must make sure to point our apache2 document root to the Engelsystem directory to prevent any user from accessing anything other than the public/ directory for security reasons. Do this by modifying the apache2 configuration file (assuming you are running this on a server hosting no other sites):

apt-get install nano -y
nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/000-default.conf

Change DocumentRoot /var/www/html into DocumentRoot /var/www/html/engelsystem/public. Restart apache by typing service apache2 restart. See the result of your page by going to your host in your browser.

If you made it this far without any issues, congratulations! You have successfully set up Engelsystem on your localserver and can use it to manage your event.