Praise in other languages

[gaborcsardi]

Specifically Chinese first, via @Avatoo. \o/

We need to work out some simple architecture first.

[maelle]

I can help for praise in French 😄

[gaborcsardi]

@masalmon Cool, I'll soon update the code to handle multiple languages.

[maelle]

Merveilleux ! Fantastique ! Superbe !

[gaborcsardi]

I am thinking about a good way to do this. The goal would be to be able to write

praise(gettext("Your tests are ${adjective}!"))

or something like this, and then get praise in multiple languages. Two things are required for this:

1. We need to add some translations to testthat or whatever package we want to add international praise to. This would use the usual NLS system.
2. We need to add the parts of speech in other languages. E.g. adjectif for French, etc.

E.g. the gettext translates the string above to "Vos tests sont ${adjectif}", and then we just use this template as we are using it now.

Does this make sense? Or do we want to try automatic translation via the google translate API? I guess that could be error prone, so maybe the NLS way is better?

[maelle]

Would it be a lot of work to test the google translate API on a few examples to see how bad the results are?

[gaborcsardi]

The thing is, even is we can use google translate, we also want a way that lets people have more control. So why not start with that?

[maelle]

Hi @gaborcsardi following up on this -- a bit late sorry. What exactly could I do to help make praise work for French too (apart from contributing words)?

@chucheria would like to contribute for Spanish.

[gaborcsardi]

@masalmon Thanks!

I guess we would need to decide what "work" means. I.e. consider testthat praise. It is implemented like this:

praise::praise("Your tests are ${adjective}!")
praise::praise("${EXCLAMATION} - ${adjective} code.")

So how would (hypothetical) user Hadley add support for other languages? Or all this would be automatic? The two obvious solutions are:

1. We translate all non-template words via Google translate or sg. similar in praise, if we detect a French locale. And then just substitute in the templated words, i.e. the nice adjectives to get a sentence in French.
2. We require user Hadley to supply templates in various languages. We might help user Hadley with translation tips via an automatic translation service.

The first solution is nice if it works well, and maybe it works well for simple templates. Maybe we can implement both solutions.

What do you think?

[maelle]

I guess the first solution is easier? Or in the case of a package like testthat, I could translate all the templates, because there are not many anyway?

Also, the idea would be to have people contribute the nice adjectives (because then you only need to know your language and a few git commands), but I guess that part is easy.

[gaborcsardi]

I guess the first solution is easier? Or in the case of a package like testthat, I could translate all the templates, because there are not many anyway?

Anyway, maybe we can implement both? Let's implement the automatic way, and see how it works. Btw. Google translate is not free any more, but maybe this works: http://www.r-pkg.org/pkg/RYandexTranslate

Also, the idea would be to have people contribute the nice adjectives (because then you only need to know your language and a few git commands), but I guess that part is easy.

Agreed.

[maelle]

I've just installed RYandexTranslate & registered for the free service (at last!). They seem to use two-letters language code.

I've also looked at your commit regarding language detection, is there a particular reason you use Sys.getlocale() instead of Sys.getlocale(category = "LC_COLLATE")?

[maelle]

Last very small things for today, I looked at praise code in testthat and the praising and encouraging sentences are "hard-coded". Should praise have categories for this (a "english_congratulation.R" and "english_encouragement.R"), and can we hope to have them replaced in testthat?

The Yandex API works well for the unique sentence to be translated in testthat:

> translate(api_key, text = "Your tests are", lang = "en-fr")
$lang
[1] "en-fr"

$text
[1] "Vos tests sont"

[maelle]

I've just realized that in languages like French ${adjective} will need to be ${singular-adjective} and ${plural-adjective}.

[gaborcsardi]

I've also looked at your commit regarding language detection, is there a particular reason you use Sys.getlocale() instead of Sys.getlocale(category = "LC_COLLATE")?

DOn't remember. Looks like this is what I am doing: 0ca9979#diff-951791f1fb37d9e5b0f0cf852ce38d83R30

I suppose we can add LC_COLLATE here as well, I don't really see why you would have that set up and the others not, but I don't know much about locales.

. Should praise have categories for this (a "english_congratulation.R" and "english_encouragement.R"), and can we hope to have them replaced in testthat?

Maybe, but in general I would leave writing sentences up to package authors depending on praise.

I've just realized that in languages like French ${adjective} will need to be ${singular-adjective} and ${plural-adjective}.

Hmmm, yeah, that's a problem, and more "complicated" languages will be even worse.

So I would keep it simple and use the auto-translation for suggestions only. Maybe the manual praise translation is even better, then people speaking various languages can just contribute translations to testthat and other praising packages. How about this?