Weblate and Ukrainian language

Internationalization
1

Currently, Ukrainians are moving away from Cyrillic. Among other reasons, because of the war. They want to use the Latin alphabet.

Example:

web
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English:

Picard uses the open and community-maintained {url|MusicBrainz} database to provide accurate information about millions of music releases.

Cyrillic:

Picard використовує відкриту базу даних {url|MusicBrainz}, яку підтримує спільнота, щоб надати точну інформацію про мільйони музичних релізів.

New Ukrainian:

Picard vykorystovuye vidkrytu bazu danykh {url|MusicBrainz}, yaku pidtrymuye spilʹnota, shchob nadaty tochnu informatsiyu pro milʹyony muzychnykh reliziv.

Which version do we accept?

2

I would suggest having the option for both. Ukrainian (Cyrillic) and Ukrainian (Latin).

Depends on if there is a current Ukrainian translation? If there is then I would not delete it.

2 Likes
3

@IvanDobsky

It is only necessary to clarify the current situation.

You can ask an English question in Google, e.g.

“Ukraine is switching to the Latin alphabet”

because the matter is complicated.

4

Here is the Transliteration of Ukrainian Cyrillic into Latin Alphabet:

https://www.grafiati.com/pl/transliteration/

new Ukrainian

Picard vykorystovuie vidkrytu bazu danykh {url|MusicBrainz}, yaku pidtrymuie spilnota, shchob nadaty tochnu informatsiiu pro miliony muzychnykh reliziv.

5

Pros and Cons of Ukrainian Latin Alphabet:

https://www.quora.com/After-Putin-is-gone-will-Ukraine-adopt-the-Roman-alphabet-so-as-to-sever-links-with-the-Russian-Cyillic-past

Pros of Ukrainian Latin Alphabet:

  1. There were already projects of Ukrainian Latin Alphabet.
  2. Most developed countries use Latin, it will make us closer.
  3. Latin alphabet is more compact.
  4. Technical devices are configured for Latin alphabet.
  5. People from Slavic countries, where use Latin alphabet, will understand us much better.

Cons of Ukrainian Latin Alphabet:

  1. Cyrillic alphabet has history for more than 1000 years in Ukrainian language. Masterpieces of our culture are written in Cyrillic.
  2. Сyrillic on Ukrainian lands developed autonomously and for a long time didn’t bind us to Russia in any way.
  3. Cyrillic alphabet conveys real pronunciation and phonetic nuances of Ukrainian language. Cyrillic alphabet in Ukrainian means “you write as you hear”. We have a lot of soft and other specific sounds, which are easily transmitted in Cyrillic and looks succint and organic.
  4. Latin transliterations of Ukrainian looks very heavy, with a lot of unnecessary letters. At least, 14 letters, soft signs, apostrophes always are source of problems. For example, one of our former presidents - Yushchenko (Ющенко). 10 letters vs 6 letters. Lviv (Львів) is actually has soft “L” and more obviously “w” than “v”. Also a lot of letters, letter combinations and sounds in Ukrainian Latin are not the same as in Ukrainian Cyrillic. My first name can be represented as Yulia, Yuliia, Yuliya, Iuli(i)a, Iouli(y)a, etc, when in Ukrainian Cyrillic it’s just Юлія (4 letters), which represents real pronunciation.
  5. Greece and Bulgaria haven’t any problems in EU and NATO with their specific alphabets. China, Japan and South Korea are developed countries, in spite on their alphabets.
  6. All these problems demand a lot of works of philologists, linguists, etc. These changes demand a lot of money.
1 Like
6

It’s far too early to decide any of this really. There is no widespread adoption of latin script in Ukraine, yet.

If there was the situation would be the same as with other languages which are written in different scripts. There would be separate locales for latin and cyrillic script, as it is the case for e.g. Serbian

In the end it depends on available translators anyway. But would be great to see the Ukrainian translation getting more attention. Do you speak Ukrainian?

2 Likes
7

Unfortunately, I don’t speak Ukrainian, but I am Slavic.

8

There is no Ukrainian in MusicBrainz languages.

So let’s just wait for some Ukrainian people who asks to begin localisation, before thinking about it.

1 Like
9

@jesus2099 but the translation of Picard website has already started.

https://translations.metabrainz.org/projects/picard/website/

10

So we should ask the question to those Ukrainian translators.
As Ukrainians, what script did they use?

11

Users @stiltezh and @Nerten 9 months ago.

They used Cyrillic.

https://translations.metabrainz.org/changes/browse/picard/website/uk/?page=1&limit=20

1 Like
12

I studied Russian for 10 years in primary and secondary school. Then in 1989 the Berlin Wall fell, socialism collapsed and the Soviet Union (CCCP) was no longer a friend. :wink:

Poland turned towards the West.

13

What an interesting topic!

First, I am careful about the premise of the question. “Currently, Ukrainians are moving away from Cyrillic.” How many Ukranians? Just a few, making a political point? Or a large number of people, including influential cultural leaders? Are government standards and laws specifying that Latin script should be used over Cyrillic script?

For what it’s worth, Wikipedia’s Ukrainian Latin alphabet article describes Ukraine as defining how to use Latin script for spelling Ukranian names in non-Ukranian texts, or as a future possibility for Ukranian texts, but not as a current reality.

Second, regarding, “Which version do we accept?”, my first answer is: “all of them”. The technology for labelling languages of text fields allows for cases where a single language can be written in multiple scripts. If you simplify, the labels treat them like two different languages.

Third, MusicBrainz typically advances in response to volunteers who are willing to make contributions. If there are translators who want to contribute translations of Ukranian in Latin script, great! If there are also translators who want to contribute translations in Cyrillic script, also great! The only caution is, having many fragmented projects with similar purposes may result in none of the projects progressing far enough to be useful. The volunteers might be happier with the results of their work if they all unify behind a single project. But in my opinion, that is really up to the volunteers.

The translations are managed on the Weblate platform, and Weblate’s documentation on language definitions says,

Weblate prefers two letter codes as defined by ISO 639-1, but uses ISO 639-2 or ISO 639-3 codes for languages that do not have two letter code. It can also support extended codes as defined by BCP 47.

The current MetaBrainz Ukranian translations seem to use the language code uk. Wikipedia claims that ISO639-1 defines uk as referring to the Ukranian language, as written in the Cyrillic script. Translation into Ukranian in the Latin script should use a standard code for that purpose, perhaps uk-Latn (by analogy with sr-Latn in BCP 47, 2.2.3 Script Subtag.

So, if translators would like to contribute translations for MusicBrainz products in Latin-script Ukranian, I would suggest working with Weblate to agree on a language code to use across Weblate for Latin-script Ukranian. Create new MusicBrainz translation entries using that language code. They will be in parallel with the existing translations in Cyrillic-script Ukranian using the code uk.

4 Likes
14

If there is a Ukrainian on the forum right now, could he check this translation?

If he accepts, I can enter this translation (90% of the work and it’s not a problem for me), and then he will only make minor corrections.

uk1
uk11219×1096 239 KB

uk2
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15

This site https://picard.musicbrainz.org/ I translated using Microsoft Translator in Edge.

Here is how to enable/disable it.

16

I’d actually ask you to not use machine translation for a language unless you can actually read and write this language. Or if you do use machine translation please do mark the so translated strings as “need editing” so they actually need to be checked.

Right now the Ukrainian translation is shown largely completed without indication that it actually was to a large part machine translated. The current state indicates it might be fine.

Having a basic understanding of a language just because it shares some similarities with other languages you know is often not enough.

For example as a German I can often get the general meaning of short texts in Dutch and sometimes even understand entire sentences, especially if there is some context. But I don’t speak Dutch and I’d definitely not feel comfortable to judge if some machine translated text is correct or not.

10 Likes
17

I wanted to say that too.
Machine translation looks very dumb and awkward (I know in French, at least), they never use the right terminology and are unpleasant to read.

You were showing a feature that allows users to see translated version of website.
So, fine, let them do this way.
When there is a translated website, we assume it will be not be machine translated.

2 Likes
18

In my defense, I will only say that this is technical language for translation, not poetry.

19

Ha ha, sure.
But still. :wink:
We already have systems like you showed for Edge, to auto-translate websites, if we really need.

20

The more important question is:

What is better for a Ukrainian: a page in an unknown English language or a page in Ukrainian with a 10% error?