Don't count low/hidden priority strings toward translation percentage

[Nao]

On translate.wordpress.org, completion percentage is calculated based on the total number of strings, regardless of the priority.

However, there are strings that don't need to be translated - such as:

• Changelogs (they are technical info for developers, not end users)
• Error messages that are only shown to developers (same as above)
• URLs without translated version (it's ideal if the plugin author can indicate this in the translator comment)

Changelogs can be long and numerous, causing the false perception of the incompleteness of the translation.

This is problematic in these cases:

1. When GTEs look for projects that need validation on ​https://translate.wordpress.org/locale/LOCALE, "percent completed" pulldown doesn't reflect the percent of strings that should be translated
2. When translators look for plugins that need translating on ​https://translate.wordpress.org/locale/ja/default/stats/plugins, the percentage has the same issue
3. Overall, it's quite intimidating to see so many untranslated strings to complete a project.

For example, there are only 10 strings that are from the description section of the Akismet plugin's readme, but 260+ strings in the readme sub-project come from the changelog. A translator may feel like completing 12 translations but seeing hundreds of strings to complete can be discouraging for them to even get started.

[tobifjellner]

​https://translate.wordpress.org/locale/ja/default/stats/plugins (and corresponding pages for other target languages) now (March 2019) show ONLY strings in the code itself. I.e. whatever counts towards the threshold of 95%.
Any translatable URL:s in the code need to be translated, even if it only means copying them.
And error messages in the code need to be translated, even if the style guide of a locale would state that it's ok in some cases to just copy the English text.

[Luciano Croce]

Replying to tobifjellner:

And error messages in the code need to be translated, even if the style guide of a locale would state that it's ok in some cases to just copy the English text.

@tobifjellner I am perfectly in accord with you, but in this case I'm "part" of this locale and I have to "follow" that recommendations.

I do translations in many other languages and this "rule" (on fact) is not "followed" by no other locals where I translate.

In this case, it would be very interesting to create a "common" rule according to all other locals, for example.

[tobifjellner]

@luciano-croce I don't know about any locale that does it this way, I was referring to previous discussion in this ticket. Obviously, if any locale would ever consider NOT translating error codes, that would be only if these error codes are solely aimed at developers. But even in this case, you'd need to "translate" them, in order to reach the threshold for language pack creation.

[Luciano Croce]

Ah, ok. Thanks! :)

[dd32]

From a technical perspective, changing the completion % from being on all-string-in-project to subset-of-strings-in-project isn't going to be an easy (nor quick change).

Due to the scale of Translate.WordPress.org we don't currently query these data points in a way that allows this change to be made easily.
We cache the translation status of each project/locale in a custom table in the format of project, locale, strings, translated, untranslated, waiting, etc and calculate the % as translated/strings*100, but we don't include any data about the string priority counts.

In order to add this, we'll have to breakdown the data further, for example including the breakdown of statuses:

project, locale, string_count, translated, untranslated..., string_count_high, translated_high, string_count_normal, translated_normal, string_count_low, translated_low

Given the size of the table (18.3million entries) we'd be better off summarising the data down even further though to the actual values we will have a use for, for example:
project, locale, string_count, translated, untranslated, ... completion_percent, completion_percent_ignoring_low_hidden_priority (assuming we only care about overall completion_percent & percent ignoring low/hidden strings)

[Nao]

@tobifjellner You're right about top plugins list, my mistake.

@dd32 thanks for explaining the technical status around the percentage count. I don't think too much resource should be spent here, but let me step back and explain the intention of this ticket.

Currently, it's not easy for translators to see how exactly the plugin/theme translation creation works.

We have a doc for ​language pack creation process, but that's not something that can be easily found.

I just want to help translators become aware that they can complete Stable and high & normal priority readme strings then move on to next project. But currently, the combined stats on pages like ​this (83% at the moment) tend to make them feel they need to bring it to 100%.

For example, translate.wordpress.com theme projects show a message like this to translators:

Note: These translations will only be activated on WordPress.com when 85% of the strings have been translated. Currently only 76% are translated.

Would this be something we can look into? e.g.

Note: Strings in readme are deployed almost immediately. The language pack for the plugin is only available when 95% of the "Stable (latest release)" sub-project strings have been translated. Currently only 76% are translated.

[Nao]

Translation percentage notice on translate.wordpress.com

[tobifjellner]

Hmm. Such a kind of note for relevant projects (plugin code and themes at 95%) would be golden. But that would be a separate project.

[dd32]

Replying to Nao:

I just want to help translators become aware that they can complete Stable and high & normal priority readme strings then move on to next project. But currently, the combined stats on pages like ​this (83% at the moment) tend to make them feel they need to bring it to 100%.

Note: Strings in readme are deployed almost immediately. The language pack for the plugin is only available when 95% of the "Stable (latest release)" sub-project strings have been translated. Currently, only 76% are translated.

Adding such a note to these projects is totally doable, and something I would definately support.
I agree that it's not a very transparent process for translators (and plugin/theme authors alike) currently and I often see those "I've got it 50% translated, when will a language pack be made?" questions as well.

If someone can propose some exact wording (even if it's just what @Nao has posted), we can get it in there. I'd love to see a link to any relevant handbook pages in there too.

[Nao]

@dd32
Just an update. @tobifjellner and I will be working on a handbook page to describe the moderation process ("So I've suggested strings, now what?") to link from the banner message.

We'll get back to you when we have that ready for linking.

Here's my rewrite of the text without the link

Note: Strings in readme are deployed almost immediately. The language pack for the plugin will be generated when 95% of the <a href="​https://translate.wordpress.org/projects/wp-plugins/PLUGIN_NAME/stable/LOCALE/default">Stable (latest release)</a> sub-project strings have been translated (currently XX%).

[Luciano Croce]

Low priority/hidden strings continue to be counted in the translation percentage...

[ocean90]

In 8501:

Translate: Add an info notice about language build status for themes and plugins.

Props Nao.
Fixes #4251.

[ocean90]

In 8557:

Translate: Fix condition for displaying the language build status notice.

See #4251.