[Japanese] Improving the locale

Localisation
#1

I am happy to find that a lot of good effort has been put into creating a Japanese locale for Sailfish OS. お疲れ様です！

However it is still far from complete: there’s still quite a number of incomplete, inconsistent, incorrect (both grammatically and content-wise), misleading, weirdly formatted, unidiomatic or otherwise inadequate bits that could use some improvement. As much as I would love to have my phone in Japanese, I find the current version pretty much unusable as it not only looks terrible but at times I genuinely struggle to figure out what exactly it is trying to say.

I would like to do a rather large-scale revision (1000+ strings) of the translation, and am prepared to invest plenty of time to work on it. I was just wondering, there doesn’t seem to have been much activity in a while, are people (most of all the coordinator of course) still committed to working on this?

If yes, I think there are several questions about style choices that we should discuss.

If not, I would be most happy to coordinate (a/the) project myself.

I would just like to have a neat, easy to follow, professional looking Japanese locale for Sailfish OS.

どうぞよろしくお願い致します。

4 Likes
#2

It’s community driven. You can help:

https://sailfishos.org/wiki/Translate_the_OS
https://translate.sailfishos.org/ja/

#3

Hi,

Thanks for the reply!

Yes I am aware of that, and I have also made hundreds of suggestions there already. It’s just that it looks like the coordinator and others haven’t been around for quite a while. It’s a waste of time posting suggestions if no one is ever going to review and accept them.

In addition, many of my suggestions have to do with overall consistency and style, and I think that it is a good idea to discuss these choices with the coordinator and everyone before systemically posting a huge number of similar suggestions.

#4

If somebody takes the lead I would happily help out! Using sailfish on an XA2 as daily driver in Japan. Would also love to improve the keyboard…

3 Likes
#5

Alright, thanks! ＼(^o^)／

I’ll be happy to lead the project if no one else will so I’m sure we can get this moving.

Better keyboard would also be very welcome!
I’m just a poor humanist with little to no tech skills so I don’t know anything about that stuff, but language and translation is definitely my strong suit. I hope we can work together to make Sailfish more usable in Japanese!

どうぞよろしく！

#6

Hello @ttpr, thank you for coming forward with your initiative!

I have made you the coordinator now, since “silence means consent” (i.e. the silence from coordinators that you pinged in the TJC post last month, and no objections on here either :slight_smile:)

I can automatically accept all your suggestions, if that makes the work easier and faster for you.


We would be extremely happy to finally have the official Japanese 日本語 entry in the list of languages without anyone needing to install extra openrepos translation packs. The only thing preventing it’s the keyboard.

Perhaps @pvuorela could tell us, if it wouldn’t be too much of an effort for Jolla to take in the “anthy” input method. Licence-wise it’s the integration-friendly LGPLv2.1.
Maybe if someone built it first on community OBS, after removing binaries and splitting src tarball away into its own package would make our life easier?

Cheers!

3 Likes
#7

Thank you!
Yes if you could accept the suggestions that would help a lot :slightly_smiling_face:

I’ll get to work right away!

1 Like
#8

If the needed bits are LGPL or more relaxed license it would be ok in principle. Though with a separate engine and more complicated input handling it will require a lot more work than a conventional extra layout. I cannot make much promises, especially when I’m not too familiar with these projects, but it certainly helps if the sources are packaged good, RPMs get built from sources without binary blobs etc.

1 Like
#9

Alright, I’m done with my changes for now, next step would be to see the whole thing in action!

@martonmiklos could you (or someone) make the current version of the Japanese locale available on OpenRepos? That would be great!

#10

Sure I will do a release at the evening!

1 Like
#11

Updated localisation pack available from the openrepos:
https://openrepos.net/sites/default/files/packages/5626/unofficial-jolla-language-pack-ja-3.4.0-0.0.1.noarch.rpm

Have fun!

1 Like
#12

Amazing, thank you so much!

@rijken1973 and everyone else out there who knows Japanese, please give the language pack a try and come forward with any comments, suggestions and discussion!
There’s still plenty of fixing and polishing to be done, but in general I think it’s starting to look pretty good.

Suggestions through Pootle are obviously very very welcome, but if you wish to propose a change affecting 10+ strings let’s discuss it here first. :slight_smile:

#13

Have installed and will look at in detail later this week. First thing though, ‘People’ app, think translation of 人々 is a bit weird, but a normal 連絡先 or アドレス帳 does not fit nicely either… Any other suggestions here?

1 Like
#14

Yeah I agree, that’s a difficult one.
Just keeping it as People is of course an option too, but that isn’t really great either.

I guess in Facebook, LINE etc they call everyone “友達” but I don’t really like that either because the contacts are obviously by no means limited to your friends, and this kind of use creates a kind of inflation of the term. Also this is clearly different because there is no “becoming friends” kind of function, just a basic address book.

#15

There is a problem with the short date (in messages, lock screen etc).
It only shows the second digit of the day number, and nothing for single digit days, e.g. 8月日 for 7.8. and 8月7日 for 17.8.

I think it must be this string:
https://translate.sailfishos.org/ja/sailfishsilica-qt5/translate/sailfishsilica-qt5.ts#unit=210312
which I entered as %3%1日.

I wonder if it is because there is no space between the parametres?
But that doesn’t seem to cause problems anywhere else, and ideally there would be no space.

I wonder if %2月%1日 would work better?

#16

maybe a simple 電話帳? or even 連絡先 would be better?

#17

Let’s just try? Not that many people using it in Japan yet, so right now trying is key.

Will look at rest by using it and if I see strange things. Think the phone app, ダイヤラ is strange as well. Should be something like キーパッド

1 Like
#18

The problem with 電話帳 is that it isn’t actually by any means limited to 電話. I guess it would be good enough though.
I changed the header in the 電話 screen to show 電話帳 as the third option, at least there it fits perfectly.

I would also think it to be nice to clearly distinguish the name of the app and the word “contact” in general so 連絡先 isn’t ideal, but well I guess we can just add the word アプリ where necessary. If we find nothing better let’s do that, that isn’t what the Jolla guideline wants but you can’t get everything.

How about 連絡帳? I think that originally refers something used for the purpose of 連絡 (in schools, kindergartens etc) rather than for noting down 連絡先, but there seems to be a Google contacts app called that. It’s just a question of whether people find that intuitive or not.

#19

連絡帳 is what android uses too, i’d go for that.

#20

I was not quite sure where to ask this, but these thread seems to be closest related:
I tried putting a custom version of SailfishOS on my “Tama device”, a Japanese ZX2c to be exact and it worked fine, but I just couldn’t find a way to input Japanese text… since I am living in Japan that is kinda essential.
additionally, since some of you are also living in Japan, I was wondering if there is a solution to using Line? since that sadly is also kinda essential… (as you probably know yourself)