Strategize & start internationalisation (i18n) and localisation (l10n)

[khaeru]

With a growing global TDC user base, it will become increasingly important to internationalise and localise TDC content. To quote:

Internationalization [often abbreviated i18n]¹ is the process of designing a software application so that it can be adapted to various languages and regions without engineering changes.

Localization [l10n] is the process of adapting internationalized software for a specific region or language by translating text and adding locale-specific components.

¹ ‘18’ stands for the number of letters between the first i and the last n in the word internationalization.

This includes:

1. The user interface of https://portal.transport-data.org.
2. The documentation for the TDC tools (https://docs.transport-data.org) → Internationalise documentation tools#60.
3. Other materials, e.g. the standard ToRs.

In each case, we should come up with a general strategy/plan, which involves making initial, provisional choices of (a) appropriate tools, (b) who to set up and maintain them (i.e. do the i18n work), and (c) who to do the l10n work, and (d) which aspects are to be prioritised.

For instance:

• For (2)/(a), the documentation is already written in Sphinx, which has built-in localisation features: https://www.sphinx-doc.org/en/master/usage/advanced/intl.html
• For (1)/(a), we will need to investigate whether CKAN and the PortalJS (Datopian-developed front-end) software are each internationalised/can be localised.
• For (a) in general, we can consider tools like Weblate, which can be cloud-hosted or used via a hosted installation (for the latter, see this example for an open-source mapping app).

This can serve as a general/tracking issue, and then we can have sub-issues on other repositories as appropriate.