Overview

The Micro:bit Educational Foundation's website, microbit.org can be translated into a range of languages.


The Foundation uses the community translation service called Crowdin to manage and maintain translations.  To work on translation tasks, we would encourage you follow this link to  register as a translator / proofreader on the micro:bit website and set-up an account on the Crowdin platform.


Contents


What to translate


These parts of microbit.org are available for translation.


Description
page translate link
Projects landing pagehttps://microbit.org/page-translate/projects/
Projects listing pagehttps://microbit.org/page-translate/projects/make-it-code-it/
All projectsindividual project pages
Video subtitlesfor more information visit - translating micro:bit videos
Home pagehttps://microbit.org/page-translate
Let's Code pagehttps://microbit.org/page-translate/code/
Buy pagehttps://microbit.org/page-translate/buy/
site wide navigationtop and bottom site navigation
Get started - First stepshttps://microbit.org/page-translate/get-started/first-steps/introduction/
Get started - User guide https://microbit.org/page-translate/get-started/user-guide/overview/
do your :bit landing pagehttps://microbit.org/page-translate/projects/
do your :bit introduction pagehttps://microbit.org/page-translate/projects/do-your-bit/
do your :bit challenge pagehttps://microbit.org/page-translate/projects/do-your-bit/challenge/
Global goals resources https://microbit.org/page-translate/projects/do-your-bit/global-goals/introducing-the-global-goals/
https://microbit.org/page-translate/projects/do-your-bit/global-goals/good-health-wellbeing/
https://microbit.org/page-translate/projects/do-your-bit/global-goals/climate-action/
do your :bit previous challenge winnershttps://microbit.org/page-translate/projects/do-your-bit/winners/2020/
https://microbit.org/page-translate/projects/do-your-bit/winners/2019/


Brief for translators


To help maintain translation consistency across the site, we ask all of our volunteers to stay close to the intent of the original text and follow the guidelines below.


Target audience
teachers, educators, school leadership, education technology experts, students, young people
Purpose (category) of the website
education technology, technology for children, hardware and software
Target languages
Language dialect
If the translation is for a specific dialect, this is specified in the project name , e.g. Portuguese (Brazil), Traditional Chinese (HK) otherwise, assume that local dialect is not included in that project.
Translation memory
available for the majority of projects
Project glossary
project specific glossary community contributions are encouraged
Links and references:
Tone of voice
informal and family friendly, avoid using slang words
Reserved words, not for translation
Micro:bit Educational Foundation

micro:bit

micro:bits

BBC micro:bit

microbit.org

micro:bit classroom

do your :bit

micro:bit champion

Make it: code it

MakeCode

MicroPython

Python

Scratch

Worlds Largest Lesson

British Council

Unicef
Forms of punctuation (ndash, mdash,ellipses)
format in the target country should be used
Are there any characters that cannot be used?
yes, Single quotation marks not to be used - website formatting uses double
Maintenance of languages
translation and proofreading is ongoing


Page translate



The simplest way to get started with translations is to use the page translation feature  at https://microbit.org/page-translate/


Page translate provides you with a contextual view of the web page that requires translating. Strings are highlighted with a coloured dotted border. The colour of the border indicates the status of the translation:

  • Red - Not translated
  • Blue - Translated but not approved
  • Green - Translated and approved by a proofreader


To use Page translate


  1. Open the website at https://microbit.org/page-translate/ and login or register an account with Crowdin
  2. Navigate to the page you wish to translate
  3. Click on a string anywhere on the page to add a translation

Adding a translation in Crowdin



Login to Crowdin and select your language from the list available to you. In this example, we are using Norwegian Bokmal. You will be presented with a dropdown menu of all the files available to translate. The files for microbit.org are located in the cms > main > production folder.



In this view, you can hover over the status bar for each file to see the completion status. The blue bar represents the number of words translated and the green bar, the number of words that have been proofread and approved.



Selecting a file will take you into the Crowdin editor to view the source strings that require translation. Selecting a string will load it in the editor window on the right-hand side of the screen, where you can add and save your translation.



You might find it easier to work on the translations if you open the web page that you are working on in another browser window. For example, open the Beating heart activity in Crowdin and open the equivalent window on the website:


Here is a map of translation folders in Crowdin and where they relate to on the website:


Crowdin folder cms/production/Website URL
buyPage
https://microbit.org/buy/
deviceFeature
device features to support Make it :code it projects https://microbit.org/projects/make-it-code-it/
dybGenericPage
https://microbit.org/projects/do-your-bit/
dybWinners
https://microbit.org/projects/do-your-bit/winners/2020/
https://microbit.org/projects/do-your-bit/winners/2019/
firstStepsPage
https://microbit.org/get-started/first-steps/introduction/
globalConfig
menu items and commonly used words
globalGoalsResource
https://microbit.org/projects/do-your-bit/global-goals/introducing-the-global-goals/
https://microbit.org/projects/do-your-bit/global-goals/good-health-wellbeing/
https://microbit.org/projects/do-your-bit/global-goals/climate-action/
landingPage
https://microbit.org/
letsCodePage
https://microbit.org/code/
makeprojects in https://microbit.org/projects/make-it-code-it/
makeListingPagehttps://microbit.org/projects/make-it-code-it/
projectsPagehttps://microbit.org/projects/
subjectsubject areas in https://microbit.org/lessons/
topictopics within the subjects in https://microbit.org/lessons/
translationStringsmenu items and commonly used words
userGuidePagehttps://microbit.org/get-started/user-guide/overview/
https://microbit.org/get-started/first-steps/introduction/
cms/manual/do-your-bitproject to support do your :bit
https://microbit.org/projects/do-your-bit/

Completing a translation task in Crowdin



The Foundation manages some language projects using Crowdin tasks, these can be assigned to translators to work on specific areas of the website. This ensures that you can see those files that are a priority and that are due to be made live very soon. There are three priority tasks within Crowdin named; Make it :code it, Website essentials and Get started. 


To work on translation tasks, we would encourage you to follow this link to register as a translator/proofreader on the micro:bit website. When you log in to Crowdin you will if any current tasks are assigned to you. Please feel free to contribute to any of the microbit.org translation strings, not just those which are included in the priority tasks.



Click on view strings to view all of these strings in the editor.


The editor will show a red square next to any string that has not been translated




The task will update daily to reflect any changes to microbit.org which will need translator maintenance. The progress bar will reset to zero at this point. You can see what is left to be translated in the task by checking how many words are remaining. Below, we can see that in the French task there are 1438 words to translate before the content package is complete.



Volunteer reward programme


The Foundation are immensely grateful for the support of the micro:bit volunteer community and recognise volunteer contributions in the form of a digital badge.


There are three different levels of digital badge and these are awarded quarterly for contributions reaching 1000, 7500 and 15,000+ words. The badges can be used on social profiles, email and documents. 


The Foundation also celebrates the volunteer translator community annually on our social channels and provides enamel pin badges for all level three translators. We are still developing our reward programme, please do get in touch if you have any feedback.




FAQ

How can I contribute to the project Glossary?

Translators and proofreaders can add new terms to the Glossary through the Editor. 

For example:

Add-glossary-term.png




What do the numbered meta tags eg <1> </1> mean?

If you find a string that contains numbered tags around words, this represents text formatting on the website. For example, this source string in Crowdin:


Is rendered on the website, showing link formatting.




If you need to edit the word order of the translated string so that it still makes sense, make sure that you copy the meta tags around the words as they are set out in the source string. 


This is a correct example:

<0>Your micro:bit has a </0><1>compass sensor</1> translated to <1>compass sensor</1><0>Your micro:bit has</0>


This is an incorrect example:

<0>Your micro:bit has a </0><1>compass sensor</1> translated to <0><1>Your micro:bit has a compass sensor</0></1>


When will translated content be published?

The Foundation manages an ongoing set of tasks that can be assigned to translators to work on specific areas of the website. 

There are several different tasks available to work on within Crowdin, but the minimum benchmark for publishing a new language is the translation and proofreading of the three priority tasks below:

Make it :code it

Website Essentials

Get started


I can't register for the language I'd like to translate?

Sometimes, we need to open a new language project. If you'd like to volunteer and you can't see the language that you'd like to translate then please get in touch via help@microbit.org or open a support ticket.