On Sun, Feb 26, 2017 at 11:30 PM, Nick Coghlan <ncoghlan@gmail.com> wrote:

On 27 February 2017 at 14:03, David Mertz <mertz@gnosis.cx> wrote:
Could we have side-by-side English and whatever translated language? Then also use some sort of typographic indicator like color to show when the translation is out of date?

This kind of interface is what services like Transifex and Zanata offer translators (they also have things like phrase dictionaries, showing how particular terms have been translated elsewhere in the project).

For the actual documentation, showing partial translations is the standard practice, as the assumption is that many readers will have *some* ability to read English, they just prefer to read their native language.

I think it would be at least as useful for readers as for the translators. As you mention, many readers will have *some* English. If they can look from the left half to the right half of the screen in synchronized texts (or perhaps top/bottom; whatever), they can read the English as well as they are able while simultaneously reading as much of their preferred language as is available. If their preferred language is available but possibly not current, they could decide whether to try to understand the difference in the canonical English version.

I really liked this in books I've read. There are a fair number of languages other than English where I can make a little bit of sense of the text (but sadly only the one in which I'm proficient). Nonetheless, I like looking at the original text next to the English that I actually understand fully. Admittedly this is especially nice for something like poetry where you can read for meter on one side then content on the other... that's not the same concern as technical documentation, I realize. But even if only as an option, I think it would be a valuable interface for many readers.

Keeping medicines from the bloodstreams of the sick; food
from the bellies of the hungry; books from the hands of the
uneducated; technology from the underdeveloped; and putting
advocates of freedom in prisons. Intellectual property is
to the 21st century what the slave trade was to the 16th.