Minor translation bugs in German localization

[Badg]

Disclaimer: my technical German is imperfect; I can't confidently comment on correctness of existing translations. But, I can certainly contribute ones that are missing! Also, this was just from a quick glance over the page, so I might have missed things.

In the "build process" tab (localized to "Erstellungsprozesse") of the project page, the "how long ago" descriptor reads, for example (and with emphasis added):

1 Woche, 1 Tag ago
1 Woche, 2 Tage ago
2 Wochen, 1 Tag ago
2 Wochen, 2 Tage ago

This should instead read:

vor 1 Woche, 1 Tag
vor 1 Woche, 2 Tagen
vor 2 Wochen, 1 Tag
vor 2 Wochen, 2 Tagen

Similarly, the "Build version" button should match the "build process" localization. Currently it reads:

Build version

but better would be:

Erstellungsversion

And one more for the road:

Version latest

would be better as one of these:

Version aktuellste
Version neueste

[Badg]

I'm trying to help with this, but I have absolutely no idea how to work with Transifex! If someone can point me in the right direction I'll see what I can do.

[agjohnson]

@Badg Sorry, our docs sort of fall off a cliff on contributing with Transifex. This is probably a great chance to improve them.

Where are you stuck currently?

[Badg]

I managed to stumble through registration and adding myself to the project (wow their website could really benefit from a usability study). Probably the biggest thing I'm unclear on is the workflow: I can get to the "start translating" page, but I'm not clear on where to go from there (especially when it comes to expected workflow; I'm almost positive I've figured out some way to translate things from there, but I don't know what the RtD-preferred way is.

Another, more specific question would be: I found, for example, the missing "ago" translation. It looks like it's currently awaiting review. Questions on workflow notwithstanding, is there a way to indicate noun case? I mean, presumably there isn't (unless they have way more NLP than I'm expecting), so what's the workaround? For example, the translation window looks like this:

%(date)s ago
vor %(date)s

But, unlike English, the "vor" preposition affects the case (and therefore noun endings) of the date itself. A case-naive translation would render %(date)a in the nominative case, as eg. vor 2 Tage, but that's incorrect German; it should instead read vor 2 Tagen.

It does look like this is the only reference the %(date)s, so (provided no other %(date)s gets added), I suppose it would be possible to just edit the date representation -- if I could find it! -- but its seems like... there should be a better approach?

[agjohnson]

Ah yes. There are bound to be a number of issues like this, especially for German. The translation sources are written from the perspective of a US english speaker, so if you have any suggestions for how to make this better in source, feel free to raise an issue.

Here are the sources:

• https://github.com/rtfd/readthedocs.org/blob/master/readthedocs/templates/core/build_list_detailed.html#L9
• https://github.com/rtfd/readthedocs.org/blob/master/readthedocs/templates/core/project_list_detailed.html#L27

I'm not sure what the best fix here would be. date will be a relative time/date, so ago is probably required, at least for english.

[agjohnson]

I'm not sure what exactly core team can do better here, as a lot of German locale specific bits, but to start, perhaps we need to ensure that the relative dates are marked correctly for translation?