Wanted đŸ•”ïžâ€â™€ : Translator for SC-Voice interface

Translations
21

Oh wow, thank you so much!

This is in order to accommodate the pronunciation of the screen reader
 sometimes you have to use all sorts of tricks!

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22
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23

Venerable @Dhammanando, are you aware of any Icelandic sutta translations? I can’t see Icelandic in SC’s language list, so there seem to be none here on the site.

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As far as I know only the Dhammapada has been translated, first rather badly by Sören Sörensen in 1954, using Dr. Radhakrishnan’s English translation, and later a somewhat better one by NjörĂ°ur P. NjarĂ°vĂ­k in 2003.

From the latter:

Ef ĂŸĂ©r eru umhugaĂ° um sjĂĄlfan ĂŸig
ĂŸĂĄ skaltu gĂŠta ĂŸĂ­n vel.
Vitur maður heldur Êtíð vöku sinni.

Fyrst ĂŸarftu aĂ° kunna sjĂĄlfur
ĂĄĂ°ur en ĂŸĂș kennir öðrum.
Þannig varast vitur maður spillingu.

ÞaĂ° sem ĂŸĂș kennir öðrum
ĂĄttu aĂ° tileinka ĂŸĂ©r sjĂĄlfur.
Vel ĂŸjĂĄlfaĂ°ur maĂ°ur
getur ĂŸjĂĄlfaĂ° aĂ°ra.
ErfiĂ°ast er aĂ° aga sjĂĄlfan sig.

ÞĂș ert ĂŸinn eigin gĂŠslumaĂ°ur
hver annar gĂŠtir ĂŸĂ­n?
SĂĄ sem agar sjĂĄlfan sig
eignast góðan gÊslumann.

Innan frĂĄ kemur hiĂ° illa.
Það féðist í sjálfinu
flĂœtur Ășr sjĂĄlfinu
og brĂœtur ĂŸig eigin böli
eins gimsteinn gler.

SiĂ°laus maĂ°ur er lĂ­kur illgresi
sem sÊkir að og kÊfir vÊnan gróður.
ÞaĂ° sem hann gerir sjĂĄlfum sĂ©r
fer eftir Ăłskum Ăłvinar hans.
(Dhp. 157-162. NjarĂ°vĂ­k tr.)

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25

How is this copright-wise: Would it be possible to add it to SuttaCentral?

@Aminah

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26

Wonderful if it’s available, but it entirely depends on the copyright notice given in that particular publication (or else maybe if permission were sought it there were restrictions). At this point I probably wouldn’t pursue it if further permission was necessary, but if it’s freely available, it would be great to add to SC.

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It might be worth enquiring of the translator or his publisher, but I shouldn’t think it very likely, given that it’s a fairly recent publication from a commercial publishing house.

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28

Normally there should be a copyright notice somewhere. But I wouldn’t be able to read it


I am always in favor of making the Dhamma available also in “small” languages. If there’s only one text available on SC, that is a precious thing to have!

When I translated the Mettasutta into SaarlĂ€ndisch, my native dialect (which is not even a written language), and read it out loud to myself I was very much surprised by the effect it had on me. It reaches a deeper level of one’s mind than any other language. This has been quite a profound experience for me.

That’s why the Buddha encouraged people to learn the Dhamma in their own language.

Since the day Karl has established the German interface for Voice on the staging server I didn’t switch back to English any more, unless for testing purposes. It’s as if Voice has become so much more familiar to me! And this although I don’t have trouble navigating a website in English.

Therefore I very much welcome an Icelandic Voice interface; it will bring the Buddha’s teachings closer to people in Iceland. It really makes a difference! :heart:

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:heart_eyes:

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@Invo @Jarek @Gabriel_L @Robbie @Dhammanando

I have created new localization files for you on GitHub:

If you have already a GitHub account you can just go ahead and edit them. If you don’t have, either you create one on https://github.com/, or if you don’t feel confident to do this you can also copy your language.ts file into a local text editor or word processor and hand in your “vocabulary list” here, so that we can then enter your terms into the files on GitHub.

Don’t hesitate to post any questions here.

Good luck! :four_leaf_clover: :beetle:

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31

Hi @sabbamitta,
So, I already have a GitHub account and can open the link you provided.
I clicked the pen icon (‘fork and edit’) and I can now edit the code within the website.
For the sake of clarity of the task, should I be translating to Portuguese the text strings shown in a blue font?
Also, if I want to work on the file from time to time, do I need to click ‘Propose File Change’ every time I edit it to make sure my changes are stored and kept?
Thanks in advance for your answers to the questions above!
:anjal:

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32

Hi Gabriel, thanks for asking.

You should only edit what is between the single or double quotation marks after the colon in each line. This refers to the blue text strings, as you mentioned. Don’t change the kind of quotation marks, nor any colons or spaces inside of them, like here (left arrow):

Bildschirmfoto%20vom%202019-09-29%2009-13-10

nor outside of them. And don’t do anything to the commas after the quotation marks (right arrow), nor change anything at all outside the quotation marks.

Where it now says:

'Loading items...'

it should then say

'something in your language...'

or
': Not sorted. Activate to sort ascending.'

should become

': Something in your language. Something else in your language.'

and so on.

In a term like this

foundSuttas: "Found A_RESULTCOUNT suttas",

(line 185 in the file) the bit in capital letters, “A_RESULTCOUNT” does not need to be translated. It tells Voice that in this place the number of search results should be inserted. If you enter a search phrase into the Voice search field, Voice will return something like “Found 5 suttas”, so “5” is inserted for “A_RESULTCOUNT”.

I hope this clarifies what needs to be translated.

I would say yes, you probably should, but ultimately I’d prefer to defer this question to @karl_lew.

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Fascinating! I had never seen this before today. It turns out that Github has a user interface for proposing changes to another users’s repository. What it does is “fork” the repository into your own Github account. Apparently this means that you will get your very own copy of Voice to do with as you wish. And then Github will send a “pull request” to the primary copy of Voice that will allows us to review and accept your changes. In other words, it seems to be a totally benign and safe way to work with many other people.

What we have done in the past is give contributors complete access to Voice. The current method is perhaps too convenient–one typo can destroy software integrity, killing it with a syntax error.. So there are advantages and disadvantages to either method. Safety and efficiency tend to be polar opposites. :thinking:

Let’s explore this new method you have discovered. Go ahead and propose a file change and let’s see what happens. The change can be totally miniscule. I’ll add in the UI to select your language and perhaps we can get a first version of your changes on the staging server this week. :smile:

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Actually, Aminah guided me through exactly this method the other day for a change in a legacy text on SC. I didn’t know that you were unaware of it. :grin:

:dolphin:

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@Gabriel, InĂȘs Ă© aceitĂĄvel para o portuguĂȘs?

Podemos ajustar a velocidade e o tom.

14%20AM
14%20AM1009×375 25.6 KB

InĂȘs is one of two Amazon Web Services (AWS) Polly Portuguese voices. Although there are two voices, I thought we could start with just one while we work through pronunciation issues using available phonemes. Judging from the large amount work we spent on English voices, I think that similar effort will most likely need to be invested in non-English voices. As you can hear from the example above, the Portuguese voice has omitted “Bhikkhus”, so we shall have to work out the Portuguese pronunciation of any Pali word included in translations.

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Voice is now available on our staging server with settings for 4 new languages and one PortuguĂȘs voice, InĂȘs, who can read legacy texts! :open_mouth:

When opening that site, please ignore all warnings of your browser and open it nevertheless; some browsers ask you to add an exception for that site, so you can do that.

Karl, you are just
 incredible!!! :tada:

We won’t probably fix all pronunciation problems in legacy texts, but—in case this is also part of the segmented texts—words like “Bhikkhu” should be spoken. But maybe that’s for a later release.

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What is peculiar here is that the Deutsch voices do indeed say “Bhikkhu” and even “Savatthi”, which means that AWS Polly voices are not consistent in their speech and we will need to perform a thorough audio review for each new language. However, as you mention, these are legacy translations, so the translator might not have used a supported Pali spelling, therefore we’ll need to discuss each omission to understand what, if any, action may be required.

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38

Hi,

If it’s needed, I would be more than happy to do the Norwegian translation.

_/_

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39

That’s more than fantastic!!

I am really a bit overwhelmed by the great resonance of our little request. So thank you so much! :blush: :anjal:

I just made a file for you to work with:

Norsk: https://github.com/sc-voice/sc-voice/blob/master/src/i18n/vuetify/no.ts

@erlendne , among the voices that are available for us to use is a Norwegian voice speaking BokmÄl version of Norwegian. Would that be compatible with what you are gong to translate, and also with the sutta translations that are on SuttaCentral right now?

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40

Hi there, the accent is Portuguese Portuguese, which will sound ok for Portuguese people (10 million) odd to the majority of Portuguese speakers in Brazil (205 million people). Can we have the option of a voice closer to Brazilian Portuguese? Also, it is a bit too fast, maybe could we slow it down by a 0.1 or 0.2x factor?
:anjal:

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