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Translating Scratch Coding Cards

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chrisgarrity edited this page May 20, 2020 · 23 revisions

Overview

You can translate the Scratch Coding Cards. Scratch Coding Cards show how to create Scratch projects (such as how to create a story or a make chase game). Each set of cards has a different theme. The cards are available for students and educators on the Ideas page.

As a translator, you can choose between four different file formats for translation, whichever format is best for you. Instructions for downloading the files and details on the different formats are below.

How to help

Sign up for Transifex (Scratch Translators)

If you'd like to help with translating the cards, the first step is to sign up for Transifex if you don't already have an account. While the cards are not in a format that can be translated online, we still use Transifex as the place where we announce new updates and discuss the translations.

  1. Sign up for a free Transifex translator account. See the Transifex Getting Started Guide for more details. Note that Scratch usually does not split language by locale, so make sure you are a translator for the general form of your language. For example, if you can translate to French, make sure you sign up to translate French, and not just French (France).
  2. Once you have your Transifex account, join the Scratch Translators team. To join, go to the Scratch Coding Resources project and click the "Join Team" button.

Coordinating with other translators

The Scratch team will post an announcement when there are new versions of the cards or new sets of cards. Since translating the cards will mostly take place offline it's useful to coordinate with other translators so you don't end up translating the same cards. If you're planning on translating a set of cards we recommend starting a discussion for your language in transifex letting everyone know which cards you're going to work on.

  1. Go to the Scratch Translators team discussions: https://www.transifex.com/llk/teams/60938/discussions/
  2. Click the 'New Discussion' button to start a discussion, and select your language from the language dropdown (this will notify other translators for that language, but not other languages)
  3. Say which sets of cards you're going to work on.

Sometimes it's helpful to have more real-time discussions with other translators. You can also join our Slack community. There are channels for languages (feel free to set one up for your language if there isn't one). Questions and discussions relevant to more than one language can be added in the General channel.

Downloading the Coding Card Files

You can choose which format you want to translate based on what software you have available. You only need to translate one of the formats, they are all identical. You may also need to add the fonts to your system. We use Montserrat and Roboto. They are both Open Fonts, and they can be downloaded from https://fonts.google.com

Note: the files for translation have a few changes from the original English to make it easier to translate. We switched the fonts we used because Burbank, the original font, required you to pay for a license. We also took out rounded corners on images to make them easier to replace.

InDesign

We do not expect many people to have Adobe InDesign, so we provide other formats. However, InDesign is the tool used by the Scratch team and we provide the files for anyone that does have access to InDesign. All the cards are available on the Scratch resources repository in the InDesign-files folder. You can browse the files, but it is probably easier to download the zip file corresponding to a card deck than to download each of the files individually. You will need to fix links the first time you open the .indd file.

Slide Formats

The cards are also available as Google Slides and PowerPoint slides. These files are identical, so use whichever format is more convenient for you.

If you start with the Google Slides, make copies of the English source versions, then edit your copies with your translation. Make your versions viewable by anyone with the link, and then send the link in an email to [email protected] when they are ready to be published.

PDF

If you can edit PDF directly (such as with Adobe Acrobat), you can also translate the PDF files directly. They are available on the resources repository. The current translations of the cards are also on the resources server by language code.

Priority

Several of the activities are featured individually on the Ideas page. These are the ones that should be translated first. They include:

  • Animate a Name
  • Animate a Character
  • Make Music
  • Create a Story
  • Make a Chase Game
  • Video Sensing
  • Make it Fly (coming soon)
  • Pong Game (coming soon)

Coding Card Projects

To make it easier to translate the blocks you can download a zip file of the projects used in the Coding Cards. Please do not share these on the Scratch site, they are not designed to be remixed. Open a project in the Editor with the language set to your language and the blocks will be translated to that language. You should still check the stacks for say or think blocks and translate the text.

Getting your translation published on the Scratch Website

Send an email to [email protected] with attached PDF files, or a link to a shared folder that contains the translated files. This will get it into the tracking system to get added to the site. You can also post a response to your original discussion with a link if you want to make the translations available to others before they get added to the site.

Translating Tips

  • Translate phrases in the "say" or "think" bubbles
  • Zoom in on the blocks using the magnifying glass icon in Scratch to get higher resolution images
  • Some people have found it easier to generate images of block stacks using the discussion blocks plugin https://scratchblocks.github.io/
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