Quality assurance

During translation, use the Glossary and follow the Translation style guide, below.

After translation, translate-toolkit offers many quality assurance tools. You can:

• Check for common errors with pofilter, as described below

• Check for inconsistencies in your translations with poconflicts

Glossary

We ensure that key terms are translated consistently using a Transifex glossary: for example, the OCDS glossary. The glossary is also available within the translation editor.

Manage the glossary

The Coordinator works with Translators to update the glossary in Google Sheets. Then, the Coordinator uploads the glossary to Transifex.

Note

Use poterminology to identify potential new terms.

Use the glossary

Translators review and correct translations with warnings.

See also

Using the Glossary

Translation style guide

Please read the general style guides for context.

Markdown format

Do not change the whitespace around Markdown text. For example, do not change **Action:** to ** Acción: **. In particular, do not add spaces between the brackets and parentheses in a Markdown link ([some text](url)).

Punctuation

Please double-check that the ending punctuation is the same. A common error is to omit a final period.

Quoted words

Words in backticks (like tender) or in single quotation marks (like ‘direct’) are typically the names of fields or codes and must not be translated.

URLs

You may change the URL to an equivalent in that language, if available. For example, the OC4IDS documentation links to the OCDS documentation. Change the language path component in OCDS documentation URLs, e.g. https://standard.open-contracting.org/latest/en/guidance/ to https://standard.open-contracting.org/latest/es/guidance/.

Gender

If the text to translate is, for example, an adjective that isn’t accompanied by a noun, determine the gender to apply by checking the context in which the word is used (e.g. open in the corresponding documentation page in English).

Tone

Prefer the formal “usted” over the informal “tu”. For example, “Understand your context” is translated as “Entienda su contexto”.

Proper nouns and acronyms

Translate proper nouns and keep acronyms in English. For example, “United Nations Standard Products and Services Code (UNSPSC)” is translated as “Código de Productos y Servicios Estándar de las Naciones Unidas (UNSPSC, en inglés)”.

Changelog entries

Translate the initial verbs as their infinitive form, e.g. “add” to “agregar”, “make” to “hacer”, “remove” to “eliminar”.

Note

Changelog entries are read as “This change will …”, which is equivalent to “Este cambio va a …”.

Resources

You can lookup translations of technical terms in:

• Spanish UNCITRAL glossary (compare to English)

• Procurement-related terms from Latin America

• World Trade Organization Revised Agreement on Government Procurement (compare to English)

pofilter

pofilter -l provides a long list of checks.

It is recommended to run one check at a time, as it is easier to fix the same type of problem all at once. Then, commit all fixes from a single check at once, to similarly make it easier to review. For example:

pofilter --language=es -i es -o errors -t numbers

Read the comment that starts with # (pofilter) to understand the cause of the error. For example:

# (pofilter) sentencecount: Different number of sentences: 2 ≠ 3

Recommended checks

This list is based on a single run of pofilter against the es locale in the standard’s repository.

Filter	Documentation	Notes
numbers	Checks whether numbers of various forms are consistent between the two strings.
doublewords	Checks for repeated words in the translation.
simpleplurals	Checks for English style plural(s) for you to review.	“(s)” plurals are against the Common conventions.
brackets	Checks that the number of brackets in both strings match.	To find Markdown errors, use the regular expression brackets:(?! (Added|Missing) '\(', '\)'\n). To find other errors, remove |Missing from the regular expression. Otherwise, parentheses are often added around a machine/English term.
doublequoting	Checks whether doublequoting is consistent between the two strings.	Smart quotation marks are against the Common conventions. Otherwise, there is likely a mismatch, e.g. a missing quote, or double quotes instead of single quotes or backticks.
newlines	Checks whether newlines are consistent between the two strings.	Correct the error if the newline causes a visible change.

At time of writing, pofilter implements 46 checks, of which these 27 yield no errors:

pofilter --language=es -i es -o errors -t accelerators -t blank -t compendiumconflicts -t credits -t emails -t escapes -t filepaths -t functions -t hassuggestion -t isfuzzy -t isreview -t kdecomments -t long -t musttranslatewords -t notranslatewords -t nplurals -t options -t printf -t purepunc -t pythonbraceformat -t short -t spellcheck -t tabs -t untranslated -t validchars -t variables -t xmltags

Optional checks

Some checks are very common, but not important to fix:

Filter	Description	Notes
endpunc	Checks whether punctuation at the end of the strings match.	Translators frequently add or omit a period from the text’s end – but this does not cause misinterpretation by readers.
urls	Checks that URLs are not translated.	In most cases, the URL is translated on purpose. Note These errors can also be reviewed in Transifex.

False positives

Some checks are very likely to produce false positives:

Filter	Notes	Example
doublespacing	Authors and translators sometimes type an extra space between words. This has no visible effect.
endwhitespace	Translators sometimes type an extra space at the text’s end. This has no visible effect.
startwhitespace	Translators rarely type an extra space at the text’s start. This has no visible effect.
puncspacing	Moving inline markup or parentheticals next to other punctuation causes the punctuation spacing to change.	(OCDS) (OCDS),
startpunc	Moving inline markup to the text’s start causes the first punctuation to change. Questions start with ¿ in Spanish.	**Open Data** Los **Datos Abiertos**
unchanged	OCDS has many words that shouldn’t be translated that sometimes appear on their own.	tender
singlequoting	English plural possessives introduce single quotes.	OCDS'
acronyms	Acronyms are expected to change across languages, especially for Spanish.	WTO OMC
simplecaps	Caused by different choices for, or styles of, capitalization.	E.g. P. Ej., Examples Ejemplos Prácticos
startcaps	Caused by adding spaces around inline markup.	** Acción: **
sentencecount	Missing periods and inline markup or punctuation around periods can cause sentence counts to be incorrect.	**schema.**, “records.”