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How to use comment features to communicate between developers and translators?

Sisulizer’s comment functionality is a powerful solution for exchanging information between developers and translators. Unfortunately, comment features are still underestimated by many users, while additional information (for example info about placeholders or context) about selected items can really speed up localization and allows to avoid many misunderstandings or even bugs. Generally, you can find in Sisulizer two types of comments:

• Row comments
• Translation comments

Below you can find short descriptions about both comment types.

Row comments

This comment type is dedicated for developers / authors of Sisulizer projects. In these comments developer can spread information about selected string to translators, especially when string contains unreadable items for translators for example placeholders or when localization doesn’t allow a visualization of the item in WYSIWYG editor. With Sisulizer you can not only type your comments directly into Sisulizer project, but also use comments included directly to your source files, because Sisulizer can scan comments added to source files for some platforms. Sum up, you can use 3 different “sources” of comments with Sisulizer:

• Comments included to source file in native format of source platform, for example INI, PO, and JAVA. Usually you can disable or enable scanning of source comments in “Options” tab in source properties dialog. You can set up full definition for text source files, and of course, you can also define comments items for text parser (“Format” tab in in source properties dialog).
• Comment items in source files defined by special Sisulizer tags. Sisulizer supports this for many platforms e.g. source code (Visual Basic, C /C++, Perl, Phyton, Pascal, etc.), web related (PHP, HTML, ASP etc.), Java etc.. For using this feature you need to specify information tags in your Sisulizer project. You can find these settings in “Tags” or “Scripts” tabs (it depends on source platform type) of source properties. By default Sisulizer use “slz” item, but of course you can change this. Next include comments with specified tags (e.g. //slz this is comment) to your source code. These comments are transparent for your developer tools, but not for Sisulizer – it adds items with these tags to project as row comments. You can also use this feature with your Delphi source files. However, it requires specifying the path of your Delphi project file (DPR) in “Project” tab of source properties dialog for your Delphi source file.
• Comments directly added to your Sisulizer project. This is the most common method for adding comments. You can add comments directly in translation sheet or via text editor. More information about adding and managing comments via translation sheet you can find below in “Working with comments” part of this article.

Translation comments

Not only developers can add comments to Sisulizer’s project. Translators also can add comments related to their translations. This is possible via “Comments” column in sheet. Content of this column always depends on currently edited translation column, that is, when you edit  Finnish language, in “Comments” column displayed are only comments added to Finnish translations, when you switch to other language column e.g to German, content of “Comments” column is automatically refreshed, so you can see comments for German translations.

Working with comments

All rows with added rows comments are indicated in sheet by small, gray triangles in right top corner of Original column, while translation comments are indicated by small, red triangles in right top corner of Translation column.

When you move mouse over triangle symbol, Sisulizer displays popup with content of comment.

When comments columns aren’t displayed in sheet (like on above screens) you can’t edit these items in sheet, but you can still edit, add or delete these comments via “Text Editor” pane. However, if you want to edit comments directly in sheet or sort sheet contents by comments you need to enable displaying of these columns. Open “Columns” dialog via “View” menu -> “Sheet columns” or via appriopriated icon on sheet toolbar and move comment items from left to right panel.

You can also filter sheet by comments. When you check “Row comments” and/or “Translation comments” options in “Other” tab of “Sheet Filter” dialog, Sisulizer will display in sheet only rows with comments. You can read about sheet filter features in this article on our blog.

Exchange, import and export

As mentioned above, first of all comments are used to exchange information between developers and translators. So, of course, you can manage comments in Import, Export and Exchange Wizard, for example you can add (or not) comments to all exported file types, that is TMX, XLIFF, Text or Excel files. When you import translation from received project you can decide if you:

• Do not import comments
• Import comments only for items without existing comments
• Overwrite existing comments

Below is an example screenshot with comments import settings in Import Wizard.

From build 301 you can manage it separately for both comment types.

Janusz

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