Polis: Add right-to-left (RTL) language support

[patcon]

Re-ticketed from 💬 Gitter chat: https://gitter.im/pol-is/polisDeployment?at=5f30740e811d3571b3b83cad

cc: @sarilouis

To Do

• [ ] expand on this issue

[patcon]

Related to lots of "localization" issues, but esp https://github.com/pol-is/polis/issues/435#issuecomment-660581897 and #320

[patcon]

Going to mark this as high-priority, as it came out in sync-up convo that this is critical to polis' use in Lebanon's crisis: https://hackmd.io/@patcon/B19Vz-kzw

cc: @patrickas

[avirankatzsofi]

We're based in Israel and are interested in using the platform, but not having proper RTL support is an issue for us.
Once RTL support is there, we'll gladly contribute a Hebrew translation

[patcon]

Thanks so much for chiming in, Aviran! In the meantime (before we have RTL support), would you be willing to provide translations in advance if I added he-IL as a locale option within our [work-in-progress] translation interface? https://polis-translations.herokuapp.com? Related: #320 #345

[patcon]

The main interface for participants is client-participation, which is a backbonejs app, not react.

Research

• https://github.com/Cloudoki/backbone-i18n

[avirankatzsofi]

Thanks so much for chiming in, Aviran! In the meantime (before we have RTL support), would you be willing to provide translations in advance if I added he-IL as a locale option within our [work-in-progress] translation interface? https://polis-translations.herokuapp.com? Related: #320 #345

No problem. I'm not familiar with Mojito, looks neat

[patcon]

Rockin. Ok, thanks @avirankatzsofi! I've added Hebrew as a locale, and it's ready for translation by anyone with a GitHub account 🙂

https://polis-translations.herokuapp.com/workbench?repoIds[]=1&repoIds[]=2&bcp47Tags[]=he-IL

[avirankatzsofi]

Rockin. Ok, thanks @avirankatzsofi! I've added Hebrew as a locale, and it's ready for translation by anyone with a GitHub account

https://polis-translations.herokuapp.com/workbench?repoIds[]=1&repoIds[]=2&bcp47Tags[]=he-IL

I tried to get back to it and continue with the translation, but the link is broken at the moment. Are you deprecating the use of mojito?

[patcon]

Yes, polis team requested it not have ppl directed to use it anymore, as it isn't possible to maintain with the limited capacity of the core team.

But it's def still possible to add new translations directly into the codebase :) you can copy the file for English into a new file beside the others, and submit a "pull request". That something you'd be comfortable doing? I'd be happy to walk you through it, or in a pinch, you could just make a google doc and I could make sure it's formatting and submitted into the codebase

• most important (participant-facing): https://github.com/pol-is/polis/tree/dev/client-participation/js/strings
• (admin-facing) https://github.com/pol-is/polis/tree/dev/client-admin/src/strings

cc @colinmegill

[avirankatzsofi]

Thanks @patcon! I'll find the time to add an he.js file.
If I were to translate only some of the strings, would the missing ones fallback to English?

[patcon]

Woo! Thanks for your willingness to give it a go!

would the missing ones fallback to English?

And yeah, exactly :) so something is better than nothing

[daniel-skywalker]

Hello! Reviving this discussion - any news on the RTL issue?
After the Hebrew translation is completed, and towards making this tool popular in the regional climate conferences, visibility and UX really call for RTL display.
What can I do to help?

@metasoarous

[patcon]

Hey Daniel! Remind me, are you comfortable with JS programming? Or would you have anyone in your network who you could recruit to implement this?

I would imagine the first step would be for (1) someone research best-practices for this, (2) share some links to confirm their preferred approach, and then (3) making a quick proposal in this issue. Obviously, it's open source, so someone can just "write the code" with talking first, but after getting the 👍 , they could (4) dive into the work knowing that they were initiating work that's likely to be merged :)

EDIT: You're welcome to join these places:

1. the official gitter dev chat: https://gitter.im/compdemocracy/polis-dev-chat
2. or the unofficial polis user group's discord chat server: https://bit.ly/conversa-calls (we also run weekly orientation calls)

[daniel-skywalker]

Hey Patrick,

I was a programmer but I think this task is out of my scope. Also, I don't
believe we'll have someone for the job in the coming few months.

Theoretically I could research some best practices and link them, but there
is also a decent chance I'll be posting irrelevant stuff.

I saw this task was removed from your "to do". What does this mean? Is this
task somehow prioritized? Can I affect its prioritization?

Thanks!

On Tue, May 4, 2021 at 6:23 PM Patrick Connolly @.*>
wrote:

Hey Daniel! Remind me, are you comfortable with programming? Or would you
have anyone in network you could recruit to offer the work?

I would imagine the first step would be someone research best-practices
for this, and sharing some links to confirm an approach, and then maybe
making a quick proposal. After that, they could dive into the work knowing
that they were initiating the sort of work that will likely be able to be
merged :)

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[patcon]

I don't have any insight on that, so I'll leave someone else to respond with the inside scoop 🙏

I have further questions, but I don't think this issue is the appropriate place, so pls do jump into the discord chat linked above if you'd like to continue discussing