Getting Started Using LocaleMinder.com
Click here for information on getting started as a translator.
- Registration
- Account Creation
- Product Groups
- Product Group Settings
- Products
- lm-tools
- Ant Task
- Product Group Status
- Seeding Files
Registration
First you should register on LocaleMinder.com as a client:
Once registered you will be sent an email to confirm your email address. Click on the supplied link to activate your user account.
Account Creation
Next log on with your registered username and password and browse to the Configuration -> Account page to create a new account:
If your company already has an account you could request to join that account rather than creating a new account. An email will be sent to the account owner to confirm that you're allowed to become a member. Once you've created or joined an account you will be presented with the account balance and transactions. There is no need to fund your account at this stage however it is suggested you set your currency in the account settings.
Product Groups
Once you have created or joined an account you may create a Product Group. A Product Group is a group of Products for which the settings are the same. Create the Product Group by entering a name in the field next to the new button and click new. You may create as many Product Groups as you want.
Product Group Settings
Once the Product Group is created select the Product Group in the list and select Settings to navigate to the Product Group settings page. The 'Base Language' is a Country variant language if one exists for the specific language. For instance you have to select English (United States) rather than just English. The localizations that are returned will contain an identical set for en_US and en. The 'Use Base When Missing' option makes the base language text get returned in the localizations if no translation has yet been entered. The 'Number of Proof Reads' is the number of translators that are assigned to proof-read each individual translation.
Products
Once the Product Group is created select the Product Group in the list and select Products to navigate to the Products page. Create Products by entering a name in the field next to the new button and click new. Once you have created a Product you will need to click the Generate button next to the Product to generate an authentication code for sending LocaleMinder.com the texts for that product. You may create as many Products as you need.
lm-tools
lm-tools is an Apache 2 licensed open source library of utilities for use with the LocaleMinder.com service. It can be downloaded from here . It contains a class that can be used as a simple method call to call the service from within an application or a build system. The source is included within the distribution. Although not required, we ask that you submit and changes back to us so that they can benefit the community. The javadoc for this class can be viewed here . The lm-tools library also includes an Apache Ant task. See below .
Ant Task
<classpath>
<pathelement location="lm-tools-1.0.0.jar"/>
</classpath>
</taskdef>
<processlocalisationfiles outdir="build/web"
account="Cool Software"
productGroup="Cool Group"
product="Cool Product"
accessKey="jw3skalKNJZl7wNapD3C"
version="2.0.3"
readOnly="false"
returnLocalisations="true"
backupOriginals="true"
serializedFiles="build/web/WEB-INF/originalFiles.ser">
<fileset dir="web" includes="**/*.xhtml"/>
<fileset dir="web" includes="itsRules.xml"/>
<fileset dir="web" includes="**/*_en.properties"/>
</processlocalisationfiles>
- outdir - Output directory for the returned localized files if returnLocalisations is true.
- account - Account name as registered with LocaleMinder.com. See Registration
- productGroup - Product Group name as defined in the configuration. See Product Groups
- product - Product name as defined in the configuration. See Products
- accessKey - Access key for the Product. See Products
- version - Product version. This must be integers separated by decimals. It does not need to match your actual products version but is central to the source control within the LocaleMinder.com database and should therefore be unique for each tag/release of the product being localized. The numerics are most to least significant from left to right and should follow branching and tagging versions. See Software versioning - Change significance .
- readOnly - If set to true makes no changes to the LocaleMinder.com database. It is recommended that this be set to true when developers use the service locally where their working copies may contain modifications. Otherwise a text maybe modified by 2 developers that have conflicting text within their working copies. It is recommended that non-read only calls are made from a central server using the latest revisions in your source control.
- returnLocalisations - Whether to return the localized files and output them into outdir (true) or just submit the current base texts to the LocaleMinder.com service (false).
- backupOriginals - Whether to backup the non-localized files sent to the LocaleMinder.com service (true) or not (false). This is useful when calls to the LocaleMinder.com service are embedded into the application and therefore the returned localized files overwrite the originals.
- serializedFiles - The backup file of non-localized files.
- fileset - Fileset of files to send to the LocaleMinder.com service. See http://ant.apache.org/manual/CoreTypes/fileset.html
Product Group Status
Once the product files have been uploaded to LocaleMinder.com the software will automatically begin selecting translators and proof-readers for the required translations. This process may take some time. You can access the Product Group Status page by selecting the product group on the Product Group list page and clicking status. This page gives a breakdown of the number of words required for each language, the number of allocated words, translators and proof-readers and the costs for the words allocated so far. At this point you will need to fund your account on the Account page so that the allocated translators receive the translations that they have been allocated.
Seeding Files
If you're software application is already localized with existing translations you will likely want to seed LocaleMinder.com with the current translations. To do this select the product on the Product list page and click files. Then on the Product Files page select the file you want to seed and click seed. The Seed Product File page allows you to upload localized files. Once uploaded you will be prompted for the language and version of the file. Once complete click the seed button to import the translations.
