Manage translations outside of repository using a specialized software

[sleidig]

Currently, UI translation keys are extracted using an npm script, manually translated and then commited in our git repository. This requires the translator to have git access and be comfortable with a large, technical xml (.xliff) file. Instead, we should use some cloud-based system to manage translations to outsource these tasks and decouple them from software development.

https://poeditor.com/ is free for open source projects and could be a good solution

EDIT: our project has been approved for the free FOSS licence
https://poeditor.com/projects/view?id=740876

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An ideal process would be:

Automatic updates of tokens for translation:

• whenever there is an update to "master" branch, the translation platform automatically receives updated translation tokens

Automatic updates of translations for app users:

• whenever someone adds/updates a translation for a token in some language on the translation platform, the translations for deployed systems automatically update for users
  • this would make corrections to translations faster and easier
  • how can different app versions be handled with this? (some systems might run an older version, where certain translation tokens are different - so the system would need to have version-related translations?)
  • if translations are loaded by devices directly, we need to ensure they are cached by service worker so that offline-functionality is fully supported
  • this approach will require code changes to dynamically load translation files instead of delivering them as static angular assets (which is the current approach)
• OR: we can easily open a PR in GitHub to commit new translations that were done on the translation platform
  • this would allow us to keep the existing architecture where translation files are part of the code base and packaged with the app directly

--> read about approaches recommended by POEditor; they support CI integration with GitHub etc.

[sleidig]

For now, it seems best to not change the architecture how translation files are delivered to users (i.e. stick with the translations being part of our code repository; option 2 above) and get the integration with the translation platform set up. We can always come back to the question of delivering translation files to users dynamically (independent of a new app release) at a later time.