Overview
The Micro:bit Educational Foundation's website, microbit.org can be translated into a range of languages.
The Foundation uses the community translation service called Crowdin to manage and maintain translations. To work on translation tasks, we would encourage you follow this link to register as a translator / proofreader on the micro:bit website and set-up an account on the Crowdin platform.
Contents
- What to translate
- Brief for translators
- Using Page translate
- Adding a translation in Crowdin This route will take you into Crowdin and you may translate any page or resource you wish.
- Completing a translation task in Crowdin (as a registered translator/proofreader) Translation tasks are managed by the Foundation and offer a guided route to the specific pages and resources that we are prioritising for users of the website.
- Volunteer reward programme
- FAQ
What to translate
These parts of microbit.org are a priority for translation.
| Page description | page translate link | Crowdin folder microbit.org/new/cms/main/production... |
| Home page | https://microbit.org/page-translate | /landingPage/Micro:bit Educational Foundation |
| Get started / what is the micro:bit? | https://microbit.org/page-translate/get-started/what-is-the-microbit/ | /landingPage/What is the micro:bit |
| Get started / getting started | https://microbit.org/page-translate/get-started/getting-started/introduction/ | /gettingStartedPage |
| Get started / features | https://microbit.org/page-translate/get-started/features/overview/ | /featuresPage, /deviceFeature |
| Make it: code it projects listing page | https://microbit.org/page-translate/projects/make-it-code-it/ | /makeListingPage |
| Make it: code it projects | project listed individually in the make folder | /make |
| Let's code | https://microbit.org/page-translate/code/ | /letsCodePage |
| Buy / official products | https://microbit.org/page-translate/buy/ | /productListingPage |
| Buy / resellers by region | https://microbit.org/page-translate/buy/where/ | /buyPage |
| Buy / accessories | https://microbit.org/page-translate/buy/accessories/ | /accessoriesPage, /accessoryCategory, /accessorySubcategory |
| Subjects and topics | used throughout the site | /subject, /topic |
| Essential site navigation strings | common template strings and site navigation | /translationStrings |
| Global config | common terms used throughout the webiste | /globalConfig |
| Video subtitles | for more information visit - translating micro:bit videos |
Brief for translators
To help maintain translation consistency across the site, we ask all of our volunteers to stay close to the intent of the original text and follow the guidelines below.
Target audience | teachers, educators, school leadership, education technology experts, students, young people |
Purpose (category) of the website | education technology, technology for children, hardware and software |
Target languages | can be viewed here https://crowdin.com/project/microbitorg |
Language dialect | If the translation is for a specific dialect, this is specified in the project name , e.g. Portuguese (Brazil), Chinese (traditional) Taiwan otherwise, assume that local dialect is not included in that project. |
Translation memory | available for all projects |
Project glossary | project specific glossaries community contributions are encouraged |
Links and references: | |
Tone of voice | informal and family friendly, avoid using slang words |
Reserved words, not for translation | Micro:bit Educational Foundation |
micro:bit | |
micro:bit's | |
| BBC micro:bit | |
microbit.org | |
micro:bit classroom | |
do your :bit | |
micro:bit champion | |
Make it: code it | |
MakeCode | |
MicroPython | |
Python | |
Scratch | |
Worlds Largest Lesson | |
British Council | |
UNICEF | |
Forms of punctuation (ndash, mdash,ellipses) | format in the target country should be used |
Are there any characters that cannot be used? | yes, Single quotation marks not to be used - website formatting uses double |
Maintenance of languages | translation and proofreading is ongoing |
Page translate
The simplest way to get started with translations is to use the page translation feature at https://microbit.org/page-translate/
Page translate provides you with a contextual view of the web page that requires translating. Strings are highlighted with a coloured dotted border. The colour of the border indicates the status of the translation:
- Red - Not translated
- Blue - Translated but not approved
- Green - Translated and approved by a proofreader
To use Page translate
- Open the website at https://microbit.org/page-translate/ and login or register an account with Crowdin
- Navigate to the page you wish to translate
- Click on a string anywhere on the page to add a translation
Adding a translation in Crowdin
Login to Crowdin and select your language from the list available to you. In this example, we are using Norwegian Bokmal. You will be presented with a dropdown menu of all the files available to translate. The files for microbit.org are located in the cms > main > production folder.
In this view, you can hover over the status bar for each file to see the completion status. The blue bar represents the number of words translated and the green bar, the number of words that have been proofread and approved.
Selecting a file will take you into the Crowdin editor to view the source strings that require translation. Selecting a string will load it in the editor window on the right-hand side of the screen, where you can add and save your translation.
You might find it easier to work on the translations if you open the web page that you are working on in another browser window. For example, open the Beating heart activity in Crowdin and open the equivalent window on the website:
Completing a translation task in Crowdin
The Foundation manages some language projects using Crowdin tasks, these can be assigned to translators to work on specific areas of the website. This ensures that you can see those files that are a priority and that are due to be made live very soon. There are three priority tasks within Crowdin named; Make it :code it, Website essentials and Get started.
To work on translation tasks, we would encourage you to follow this link to register as a translator/proofreader on the micro:bit website. When you log in to Crowdin you will if any current tasks are assigned to you. Please feel free to contribute to any of the microbit.org translation strings, not just those which are included in the priority tasks.
Click on view strings to view all of these strings in the editor.
The editor will show a red square next to any string that has not been translated
The task will update daily to reflect any changes to microbit.org which will need translator maintenance. The progress bar will reset to zero at this point. You can see what is left to be translated in the task by checking how many words are remaining. Below, we can see that in the French task there are 1438 words to translate before the content package is complete.
Volunteer reward programme
The Foundation are immensely grateful for the support of the micro:bit volunteer community and recognise volunteer contributions in the form of a digital badge.
There are three different levels of digital badge and these are awarded quarterly for contributions reaching 1000, 7500 and 15,000+ words. The badges can be used on social profiles, email and documents.
The Foundation also celebrates the volunteer translator community annually on our social channels and provides enamel pin badges for all level three translators. We are still developing our reward programme and would love to hear your ideas about how you'd like to see it develop.
FAQ
How can I contribute to the project Glossary?
Translators and proofreaders can add new terms to the Glossary through the Editor.
For example:
What do the numbered meta tags eg <1> </1> mean?
If you find a string that contains numbered tags around words, this represents text formatting on the website. For example, this source string in Crowdin:
Is rendered on the website, showing link formatting.
If you need to edit the word order of the translated string so that it still makes sense, make sure that you copy the meta tags around the words as they are set out in the source string.
This is a correct example:
<0>Your micro:bit has a </0><1>compass sensor</1> translated to <1>compass sensor</1><0>Your micro:bit has</0>
This is an incorrect example:
<0>Your micro:bit has a </0><1>compass sensor</1> translated to <0><1>Your micro:bit has a compass sensor</0></1>
When will translated content be published?
The Foundation manages an ongoing set of tasks that can be assigned to translators to work on specific areas of the website.
There are several different tasks available to work on within Crowdin, but the minimum benchmark for publishing a new language is the translation and proofreading of the three priority tasks below:
Make it :code it
Website Essentials
Get started
I can't register for the language I'd like to translate?
Sometimes, we need to open a new language project. If you'd like to volunteer and you can't see the language that you'd like to translate then please get in touch via help@microbit.org or open a support ticket.