Gtranslator 2.0 preview

I just updated the translation of Gtranslator 2.0, which is about to be released. I also compiled the application from the source code, and used Gtranslator to translate itself. This way I was able to test the translation, and take a look at the new features and enhancements for version 2.0. Let’s start with a basic screenshot:

As you can see, the toolbar is cleaner, and the user interface was completely reorganized. Gtranslator still takes a lot of screen space, maybe because of the columns to the left of the messages table. The first column is for the translation status (empty means translated), and the second is for the message ID. The translation field, below, is usually simpler, but I decided to show how it looks when you are translating a message with plural forms. I really enjoyed how you navigate between the plurals: just press Alt+? or Alt+?, the same commands used to move between messages. As you can see in the screenshot, Gtranslator 2.0 displays and allows you to type double quotes, tabulations and line breaks without escaping them with backslash. Finally, the white space drawing is now done right: taken from Gedit, this feature displays certain characters instead of space, tabulation or line break. This way, you can easily spot trailing white space in the original messages and translate it appropriately. In Gtranslator 1.x, copying the text would copy the representative characters instead of the white space; in Gtranslator 2.0 this bug is fixed.

Gtranslator 2.0′s most distinctive feature is probably the plugin support, also taken from Gedit. Gtranslator comes with a good plugin set; my favorite is the tag insertion plugin. When the original message has one or more XML tags, you can press Ctrl+Shift+i to insert the first tag in the translation, and then press it again to insert the second tag, and so on. It seldom avoids key presses, but on the other hand it makes it almost impossible for you to have typos in XML tags. There are two plugins providing features I only knew from Pootle: the character map, for special characters unavailable in the keyboard, and the alternative language plugin, for translators unfamiliar with the English language. Another useful plugin is the Subversion one, which streamlines the work of translators who checkout and optionally commit to any Subversion repository. I wonder if/how could I run my usual quality control checks from inside Subversion; coupled with the Subversion plugin, that would make Gtranslator rock as a translation revision tool.

Gtranslator 2.0 supports translation memory, and with a plugin you can also use Open-Tran.eu, although I still prefer its web interface because of the “compare” mode, which separates matches by translation project. By the way, if you work with more than one translation project, or if you translate for more than one language, you’ll certainly enjoy learning that Gtranslator supports translation profiles. Too bad the translation project management didn’t make it to the 2.0 version, but AFAIK it’s in the roadmap.

In short, Gtranslator 2.0 is a great translation tool, and I guess it’ll be very popular once it’s released. If you are a translator, and you’re OK with installing from the source code, now it the time to help testing Gtranslator. Let’s make it even more mature by the time it is released!