How To Use Yeti

Developers may wish to save a copy of this page and then delete all but the last section which is for Translators.

By default, Managers and Translators access the pages they need by going to "http://www.yourdomain.com/yeti"

The first item on the page is either a request to log on or confirmation of the active logged-on name.

Management Functions

When you first go to "http://www.yourdomain.com/yeti" after installation, you should see the page that creates a User Record. Please read the instructions carefully and then specify the first (manager) user by entering your own username and password. After you save them, future calls to "http://www.yourdomain.com/yeti" will take you instead to the Yeti management page and you may enter additional users (mostly translators) from there.

Manage users

You can see a list of your exisiting users from which you can select one for editing or deletion. Above them all is an option to add a new user. This list and all the data in this package is stored in "flat" .csv or .txt files; not everyone who is competent in making websites is confident with mySQL.

When updating a record, you can change the password and the languages which that user is permitted to translate. Beware: if you give, for example, your Canadian distributor permission to edit text your French distributor has already translated, customers in France and Monaco may wake up to all sorts of unexpectedly changed material, so ...

You are strongly advised to have only one translator for each language no-one able to make a "translation" in the site's default language.

Langauges

The installation includes a table based on ISO 639 of all the main languages in the world. Because that is inconveniently long, visitors and translators select from a short list of those you tick as being actually in use on your site. You will not be able to give a user permission to translate a language until you have marked it as "in use". The table also has a column for the translated name of the language (e.g. "Deutsch" for "German") and, as a courtesy to your visitors, that (if available) is what is displayed in selection lists.

All references to languages in the coding of the site are in lower case.

Countries

Another table lists all the countries in ISO 3166. To list country names in the appropriate native language would make some inaccessible to many visitors. Most will recognise English names so only those are listed.

Alongside the name is a column to enter the native language spoken in each country (two characters, lower case from ISO 639). If automatic recognition of countries from IP addresses is not disabled and this table is well maintained, then visitors will then be shown text in their native language, if it is available.

All references to countries in the coding of the site are in UPPER CASE.

Pages for translation

Managers can view a list of the pages on the website which can be prepared for translation. Details of what happens when you select one are in the next section ...

Top of the page »
Translating pages »

Preparing Pages

Although every effort has been made to keep Yeti safe, back-up all your pages first!

Normal Pages

When you click on a page from the list of those prepared for translation, Yeti first attempts to validate your HTML with Dave Raggett's HTML Tidy. If you do not have it on your server it is easily installed from Sourceforge or as php Tidy. Alternatively you can validate your pages using the W3C Markup Validation Service. You are strongly advised not to skip this step in at least some form.

Next, Yeti scans your script. It ignores the "head" of your document and all HTML tags except and so it shouldn't interfere with any markup or coding. It places each slice of your text into a labelled span. You then see a copy of the proposed "Yeti version" of your page, highlighting two small chunks of "php includes" which actually do the work and all the span changes.

You then ask Yeti to save the new version as "yeti_test.php" in the same directory as your original file.

Test it!

If everything works as you expect, click "rename now »" and Yeti will save your old file as a backup and rename "yeti_test.php" to be your new version of the file.

The page is now ready for your translators to work on.

If you later change a page, you can safely run it through the same process again. Previous numbered sections and the inclusions will be retained and any new sections will be put into spans for translation.

Special Pages

Yeti includes provision for country-specific and language-specific pages.

By default, Yeti runs a check on each visitor's likely location from the remote IP address. This will return the two letter ISO 3166 code for the country the visitor seems to come from. This is not 100% reliable as AOL users everywhere always to seem to be from the US, sometimes people connect across country borders or via distant nodes and sometimes they use software or proxies to mask their IP.

Usually this isn't a problem and, as part of the preprocessing of your page, Yeti first looks for an alternative with the appropriate ISO 3166 two-character code and an underscore at the front. So, if you have saved "GB_home.php", your UK visitor sees that instead of "home.php". This is really useful for adding overlays or banners with announcements of events, product launches, exhibitions, special offers etc.. You may also want to add links to national organisations, stockists and the like. For the benefit of those in countries like Belgium, Switzerland, Canada and so on, these country-specific pages can be processed and translated in the normal way.

As Yeti is all about multi-lingual pages it may seem odd to facilitate separate, language-specific pages too but it is possible to concieve applications, so the option is there. Those work in a similar way with the two-character ISO 639 code at the front, e.g. "ja_calligraphy.php", "iw_calligraphy.php" (Hebrew) etc..

Location and language are NOT the same! You may not want Brazilians seeing special information for Portugal in your Portugese translation.

Managing »
Preparing pages»

Translating

Yeti presents translators with a screen which is easy and intuitive to use, whatever their level of computer ability (and which fits even an 800 x 600 screen).

After they log on, editors see list of pages already prepared for translation. They are not confused with any of the other management options.

When editors select a page they are shown the default text on the left with each section of the page numbered. On the right is a request to select the language for translation. The choices are resticted according to the permissions each editor has been given.

On selecting a language, the editor sees a textarea on the right of the page. The editor clicks on the number of a section on the left (default language) and types the appropriate translation into the textarea on the right.

Editors can use a toggle option to see the whole translated text instead of the default, useful for copying-in and recalling previously translated phrases etc.

Editors can select text and make it bold or italic and, on saving, a check is made that all open bold/italic tags have been closed. No other tags are recognised.

By default, each translation is marked as "hidden" from the public while work is in progress. As soon as the editor is ready, the translation of the page can be made "live"

Web developers could add a WYSIWYG textarea editor such as those from http://www.xinha.org or http://tinymce.moxiecode.com etc. They are not included in this distribution because they require an additional and separate plug-in installation.

Managing »
Preparing pages »
Translating pages »