Can I change the Source strings in Transifex?

[flafich]

We need to review “developer’s” English, before getting strings translated. Is there a way to do it in TX?

[flafich]

There are a few possible workflows for such cases.

1. Working on a single project
   Translators working from non-perfect “developer” English or non-English source into English, can use the feature of viewing the source strings in a different language.

Let’s look at two examples.

Ex1.Non-English source: You need to translate from Chinese into English and French.

Then, your project would be:
Source language - Chinese (China)
Target /Project languages - English (United States), French (France)

Workflow steps would be:

1. A Chinese-English translator goes to the English resource and translates there, now you have Chinese (source) and English files ready:
   

2. Now your French-English translator goes into the French resource and sees things in Chinese (as it was the source language). He/she would need to click on the gear icon, as explained here: choose English from the drop-down menu

and see the English translation displayed as the main source text (with the initial source text in Chinese still displaying, in case a translator does know Chinese and can double-check with the original source):

Once this is done, you will have all your languages in the project completed:

Ex2. “Developer” English source: You need to translate from non-perfect English into proper English and then into French.

Then, your project would be:

Source language - English (you’ll need to choose one English locale for the “developer” English, e.g. generic “en” and another locale for the final English, e.g. “en_US”)

Target /Project languages - English (United States), French (France).

The steps would be exactly the same as in the example above. Please note that important things here would be:

• To have different locales for the Englishes (plus, a general recommendation to check the target languages locales with other existing projects)
• When translating from the polished English to French with the help of the “View the source string in a different language”, a translator would need to be careful as to pay attention to the “current” source string (=polished English), rather than the original source string (=developer English) that might not be perfect or even misleading.

2. With adding a separate project

Another workflow would be to have separate projects within your organization:

1. Create Project A - for translating from non-English/ “developer” English into English

Source language - Chinese (China) // “developer” English

Target /Project languages - English

Please note, that for the “developer” English case, you would need to choose different English locales: e.g. generic “en” for the “developer” English and “en_US” for the final reviewed English.

2. Download the target files from Project A - those are your final English files.

3. Upload those files as a resource file into Project B - the project for translating from English into other target languages.
   Source language - English
   Target/Project languages - French, German, etc.