Allow Topic Title Translation

[AndreaG (Andrea Genini)]

Hi,
is it possible to add the Topic Title translation at the beginning of the translated text (see red arrow below)?

[quimgil]

The possibility to translate the title as described above is important, otherwise users have to click the translation blindly only to know whether they are interested.

The real deal would be the possibility to have the titles translated already in the topic lists, so users can browse topics and click only those they are interested about, just like all of us do here in English. However, it is easy to see that this feature would be way more complex to implement.

[pmusaraj (Penar Musaraj)]

Agreed with both requests, it would be great to have topic titles be translatable in both the topic view and topic lists.

[hansdreesen]

I agree. At least in the topic view. Seeing the title in the original language but the content in your own, is a bit odd.

[quimgil]

@pmusaraj

and topic lists

If this is expensive (technically and economically) because of the number of queries to the API that listing a page would require, one possible solution would be to show the translations of those titles that have been queried already (through topic view), and are therefore available in the database.

[nealmcb (Neal McBurnett)]

As noted by Tgr at Automatic translation for the topic titles - #6 by Tgr - Forum improvements - Movement Strategy Forum, this is multi-faceted, and degrades the utility of topic-tracking in the rest of Discourse:

There are several pieces to this:

• When I click the “translate” icon on comment 0 of the topic, it should translate the topic title as well, not just the comment body.
• When I am browsing a list of topics (such as a category page), there should be a way to translate the titles. Having to enter the topic just to be able to see what it is about is inconvenient, and conflicts with Discourse’s read tracking / notification system (e.g. from now on I’ll see the blue new comment counts on that topic, which is distracting if it is a topic I am not interested in).
• Ideally, if the translations for the topics are stored already, they should be displayed from the start. I don’t want to click translate a hundred times when I enter a category to look around. (This is true for comment bodies as well, but less annoying there.)

[angus (Angus McLeod)]

Pavilion is considering a request from a potential client to add this feature. This is the spec we’re considering. Comments welcome.

Core Feature

1. Translate topic titles into a predefined list of locales, defined by a site setting, upon topic creation.

2. Translations will be stored in topic custom fields as locale : translation key pairs (same as the key pairs for posts currently stored in post custom fields)

3. Title translations will be automatically updated on title edit. This can be disabled by a site setting.

Additions

5. Allow the topic translation controls to translate the title into additional locales beyond the predefined list, including perhaps by users without topic edit privileges.

6. Add a rake task to bulk translate existing titles

7. Integrate title translations into search

[quimgil]

@angus this is very interesting, thank you.

Are you considering in this spec an interaction with Discourse Translator and its cached translations via automatic translation?

[angus (Angus McLeod)]

@quimgil

Are you considering in this spec an interaction with Discourse Translator and its cached translations via automatic translation?

Yes, we’re planning to make a PR to the Translator plugin.

[angus (Angus McLeod)]

This core spec here will be worked on by me in July (due at the end of the month), culminating in a PR to the Translator plugin

@angus

Core Feature

1. Translate topic titles into a predefined list of locales, defined by a site setting, upon topic creation.
2. Translations will be stored in topic custom fields as locale : translation key pairs (same as the key pairs for posts currently stored in post custom fields)
3. Title translations will be automatically updated on title edit. This can be disabled by a site setting.

For those following this, note that this does not include search or the translation of existing titles. If you want those features please reach out and we can look at building them.

[angus (Angus McLeod)]

As promised here’s the PR that adds topic title translations to the Translator Plugin

Topic title translations

[mnalis (Matija Nalis)]

Hi, I come here from OpenStreetMap Discourse instance thread.

Being able to see translated topic title would’ve been very useful there. I’ve looked at that github PR (for which I’d very much like to thank @angus ), but that specific PR #79 seems to have been closed without merging in the end.

Was it implemented somewhere else, or some other approach tried if this was not the most wanted one? i.e. this feature implemented somewhere in Discourse via some other way, and if not, could it be?

[kris.kotlarek (Kris)]

The basic topic translation was just merged

FEATURE: translate topic

[th0rgall (Thor)]

Thanks for getting this first implementation merged! It’s a great start to have the title translated along with the topic content.

As feedback:

• I agree with “I feel like we can put the translate button before the topic title?” suggested here in the GitHub Thread. In a long opening post, getting to the translate button requires first scrolling down considerably.

• I think having a topic title translate button (or configurable auto-translation?) in the topic list view would be valuable: then an other-language reader can more easily decide whether they want to jump into the topic or not. I’m including some location suggestions for my specific use case/community below, where at least 3 languages may be spoken (NL, FR, EN).