Angular in China and beyond: Introducing angular.cn
This is a snapshot post on the Angular blog for the CN site launch, original post time: July 11, 2016, Read more: Original post(404), Internet Archive, Tweet.
Please welcome Ralph Wang (汪志成) and Rex Ye (叶志敏), joining our blog as guest authors. Ralph is a developer, author, community lead, and Angular GDE in Beijing, China. Rex is an entrepreneur based in London. Together, they have led the first localization of angular.io for developers in China. We're excited to share the newly-launched angular.cn with you! Read on to learn how they did it, and how you can get involved in bringing Angular to your locale.
--Naomi Black, Angular TPM
The language barrier does not stop Angular getting all the love from Chinese developers. There is new blood joining our community everyday. Some of them are newcomers, some of them have been using Angular in isolation for a long time without the support from the community. There are more than 4000 active users in our two Angular QQ chat groups, which is nothing compared to the sheer size of the whole Angular community in China. We felt that we needed to do more to enhance the influence of the community so that it could reach and help more developers.
语言的障碍并没有阻挡住中国的开发者们对Angular的热情。每天都有新人加入我们这个社区。他们有的是初学者、有的是在并没有社区支持的情况下自学了Angular很久的人。在我们两个Angular QQ群里,有4000千多名活跃的成员,但是他们仍旧远远比不上全中国Angular社区的巨大数量。我们认为我们需要加强Angular社区的影响,使得它能够影响到以及帮助更多的开发者。
We chose official document localization as a starting point.
为此,我们选择了“翻译官方文档”作为突破口。
As a large open source project, Angular 2 is in continuous development and its documents will also be constantly updated. “Complete the localization and leave it alone” obviously does not meet the requirement as a copy of an obsolete document could be misleading. We needed a new approach.
作为一个大型开源代码的项目,Angular 2处在不断的开发中,它的文档也将会被不断地更新。显然,“一次性翻译完,然后再也不管”的模式是无法满足需求的,一份过时的文档有时候甚至会误导读者。我们因此需要采用一种新的、能够保持持续更新的翻译方式。
The new approach we adopted is Git-based. We forked a copy of angular.io and appended the translations right next to each of the corresponding paragraphs. This way, our repository is structurally identical to angular.io. We can pull and merge any changes from angular.io easily and update our translations accordingly. Git has enabled our effective collaboration across time zones. We have created a script to hide the original text post compilation. It also allows our users to toggle the original text by simply clicking on the translated text, or by clicking the (Show English) button in the upper right corner. This is extremely handy for us and community contributors when it is time to review the work.
我们决定所采用的这种新的方式是基于GitHub的。我们开了一个angular.io库的分支,并把译文直接追加在原文之后,这样,我们资源库的架构将和angular.io的保持一致。当原文发生变更时,我们就会发现这种变化,并可以借助工具相对轻松的进行合并并及时更新译文。Github还让我们可以有效地实现跨时区的协作、也帮助协调我们两位译者的更新。填补了时区差别造成的无法及时交流的盲点。把这些源文件编译之后,我们增加了一个额外的js文件,它会按照格式上的规约,在运行期间把原文隐藏掉,还能通过点击译文来让原文重新显示出来。这种方式对于自己校对和社区的合作者协助校对至关重要。
After over a month of hard working, our localized docs site finally caught up with angular.io.
经过一个多月的高强度翻译,我们的翻译稿(并完成了第一遍校对)终于赶上了在angular.io上的官方文档的更新进度。
Without knowing anyone on the Angular team yet, we sent an email to Naomi in the evening, Beijing time. She was online early, California time, and replied right away. A few hours later, we were collaborating with the core Angular team and the project was officially under way . This is an interesting case of effective global collaboration. Ralph was in Beijing, Luke was in Shanghai, Rex was in London and Naomi was in San Francisco.
虽然我们并不认识Angular产品部门的人,但我们还是于北京时间的晚上给Naomi发了个邮件告知她我们的工作结果。加州还是当地的早晨,Naomi很快就给我们回复了热情洋溢邮件,并把我们介绍给了程路。几个小时后, 我们和Angular产品部门的核心团队的协作就开始了。这是个有趣的在全球范围内进行有效合作的案例。汪志成在北京、程路在上海、叶志敏在伦敦,而Naomi在旧金山。
We joined the Angular organization on Github, created the angular/angular-cn repository for our project, and were welcomed to Angular's doc authoring team on Slack so that we could speak to the authors directly regarding their articles and be informed of any future updates. This greatly increased the accuracy and timeliness of our translation. We were also able to contribute ideas to help the authors improve their articles.
不仅如此,Naomi还把我们加入了github上的Angular开发组,并在组下给我们建立了一个专门用作翻译的仓库。她还把我们加入了文档作者的slack小组,让我们可以与Angular开发组亲密接触,及时了解文档的写作及更改计划。这帮助我们避免了很多无用功,并能直接跟作者讨论对原文理解不透的地方,确保译文准确无误。反过来,我们也通过这个渠道,对多处原文提出了修改意见。
To ensure that developers in China would have consistent access from a locally-hosted official domain, Google China's Developer Relations team helped us to secure angular.cn and we launched the site. When we made our work known to our Chinese community, more than 10% subscribers instantly “liked” the news in Ralph’s personal WeChat channel. Many volunteers started to provide valuable feedback on our work, many of whom preferred to be kept anonymous. All they wanted was the feeling of being able to contribute to the community. Our work has also attracted many new Angular developers to the the community.
为了帮助在中国的开发者们能够从基于国内的服务器方便地得到统一和一致性的资源使用,谷歌开发技术推广部的中国团队帮助我们获得了angular.cn的域名并发布了这个网站。当我们向社区通告了我们的工作成果,10%以上的成员们马上在汪志成的微信朋友圈中点了赞。很多志愿者开始向我们的工作提供回馈,他们中的很多人甚至都不愿意署名,他们所追求的只是为社区贡献力量的感觉而已。我们的工作还吸引了很多原本在Angular开发者社区之外的开发者们来加入我们这个社区。
Although we expected a positive response from the community according to our past experience with Angular 1, we were still surprised with the overwhelming praises and positive feedback received. Bear in mind that some developers were skeptical about Angular 2’s brand new design approach initially. It looks like Angular 2 has eventually won their heart.
虽然早就从Angular 1的经验中就对社区的正面反响有所期待,但是这个新的网站的发布以及获得的反应仍然超出了我们的想象。要知道,有些人对Angular 2的全新设计曾经是持怀疑态度的。看来,Angular 2的这些优异特性还是赢得了他们的心。
Our work has received great acceptance and recognition in the community. It has helped many developer teams overcome the language barriers. Many teams have started or are preparing to adopt Angular 2 in their projects. There are also a huge amount of developers starting to learn and play with angular 2 in their open source projects. The Chinese Angular community has become more active than ever since the launch of angular.cn. More and more developers have become involved in the community by actively exchanging ideas and helping solve other people’s issues.
我们的努力和工作成果获得了开发者社区的接受和认可,它帮助了中国的开发者们克服了语言的障碍。已经有不少项目团队开始在筹备或使用Angular 2开发他们的项目,也有大批的开发者们在开始学习或尝试在他们的开源代码项目中使用Angular 2。自从Angular.cn网站发布之后,中国的Angular开发者社区变得更加活跃,越来越多的开发者们参与到我们的社区中来积极进行分享、交流、以及互相帮助解决开发问题。
We have also organized a team of Angular experts to translate the new ng-book 2. We will retain the same quality standard and we aim to publish the book shortly after the official release of Angular 2. We hope this will help Angular 2 take off to a flying start in China!
我们还组织了一个Angular专家团队来准备翻译并出版ng-book2。我们将坚持同样的质量标准和高效率,争取能在官方发布后不久就让本书面世,为Angular中文社区来一个开门红。
The workload for the localization is not the lightest, however it has given us great sense of accomplishment and helped us build influence in our community. If you want to contribute and at the same time obtain recognition from the community, this is the opportunity you do not want to miss. If your local community is not yet strong, this could be the starting point to build a better and stronger one. Would you like to try replicating this effort for your language? The Angular team is looking for leads to bootstrap similar projects in other countries, and we would love to help you.
虽然翻译的工作确实相当繁重,但其成就感和影响力也同样非凡。如果你想付出努力并取得所属社区的认可,这将是一个难得的机会。如果你的社区尚且孱弱,这也是一个建设并发展它的绝好时机。你愿意为Angular技术文档的翻译工作提供你的贡献吗? Angular 产品部门正在寻找更多的志愿者们来做为其它国家市场类似的翻译工作,我们很期盼有更多的志愿者们来加入我们。
There is only one Angular community and that is the global Angular community. Let us work to build up our local communities and connect them together through the Angular team, to form an ever growing Angular community worldwide.
本质上,Angular只有一个社区,那就是全球社区。让我们大家一起努力和协作,建设好我们中国的Angular社区,并通过谷歌Angular产品部门的纽带,让它成为全球不断发展壮大的Angular社区的一部分。
One flower does not bring the spring, one tree does not make a forest. Only a prosperous community could make a technology succeed. The work we have done has not only brought us a great sense of achievement, more importantly it has helped form the building blocks of a stronger community. In this day and age, only a strong community can prevent a technology from becoming obsolete quickly. Only a strong community can help us get support from each other whenever we need. Only a strong community can feed the ever growing job market, which is crucial for business success. More importantly, in the process of building up our community, we will meet countless good friends - maybe, we are already friends, we are just waiting to discover each other.
一花不成春,独木不成林。只有繁荣的社区才能让一项技术发扬光大。我们所做的这些工作,除了给个人带来荣誉之外,更重要的是它有助于建设并保持一个强大的社区。只有强大的社区,才能让我们之所学不至于成为夕阳技术;每个人都有思维盲点,只有强大的社区,才能让我们在将来遇到问题时,可以向他人求助;而将来当我们无论是以技术骨干的身份还是以创业者的身份求贤若渴时,也只有强大的社区才能为我们提供源源不断的高质量的小伙伴儿。最重要的是,在建设社区的过程中,我们结识了很多原本陌生的朋友 —— 或许,他们原本就是我们的朋友,只是在世界的某个角落等待我们去发现而已。
Contributing to a strong community is the best way to pay back to the Angular team for their continuous investment in Angular.
贡献与一个强大的社区,也是我们对Angular产品部门做作的不断的投资所能给与的最佳回报。
If we can do it, you can!
我行,你也行!
Dear friends, we look forward to joining forces with you soon!
期待有一天能与你们胜利会师。
Ralph Wang and Rex Ye
汪志成 & 叶志敏