I used ChatGPT 4 to translate the website into other languages, which I've been told it's quite good at. I'd still like at least one human editor to review each translation though.
All translation contributors will be credited on the home page of https://p5play.org.
First time translating a website? No problem! This guide will walk you through the process.
If you have any questions, I'd be happy to help! Please contact me: mailto:qashto@gmail.com
In the lang folder, you'll find a folder for each language that p5play-web has been translated into. These folders use two letter ISO 639-1 language codes. For example, the folder for English is called en.
Inside the lang/en folder, you'll find two types of files: .json and .md.
The md files are markdown files. Markdown is a simple way to format text. There are several md files in each language folder, one for each page of the website. Nearly all the text that you see on the website is stored in these md files.
json (JavaScript Object Notation) files are used to store structured data. For p5play-web, a single json file for each language provides translations for all the short form text on the website, such as button labels or error messages.
You can edit md and json files in any text editor, but I recommend using Visual Studio Code.
Take a look at the lang/en/index.md file. The first line contains
# 0In markdown, a single hash # is used for h1 headers (the biggest headers in HTML), but for p5play-web translation indicates a section of the markdown file that will be placed inside an element in the html page. The text following the hash symbol is the the id of the element (numbers are prefixed with "md"). Each section of markdown ends with another line that starts with a single hash #. If you'd like to better understand how this markdown sectioning works, compare the lang/en/index.md file to the homepage of p5play.org.
If you'd like to test your translation, you'll need to use the lang/build.js nodejs script.
nodejs let's you run JavaScript code outside of a browser, in the terminal (also called the command line). You can install nodejs from [nodejs.org](https://nodejs.org/en/
The lang/build.js script uses nodejs to read the json and md files in the lang directory and generate the HTML files for the website.
On macOS the default terminal is called "Terminal" and is located in the Utilities folder inside the Applications folder. On Windows, the default terminal is called "Command Prompt" and is located in the Accessories folder inside the Start Menu.
Open p5play-web directory in your terminal. Then, run the following command:
node lang/build.js [languageCode]Use the same language code that you did for the folder name in the lang directory. For example, to build the Spanish translation, you would run:
node lang/build.js es
When you're ready to publish your translation, you'll need to create a pull request on GitHub. Alternatively, you could just send me your edited files, but if you're interested in building a professional translation portfolio, I recommend learning how to use GitHub so you can easily show off your work to potential employers. If you're not familiar with GitHub, contact me and I can provide more information on how to do this!