Not too long ago we announced that Galaxy Zoo has gone open source – along with several other Zooniverse projects. Part of that announcement was that it is now possible for anyone to translate the Galaxy Zoo website into their own language and have that pulled back into the main site. We love translation at the Zooniverse! Using GitHub (our code repository) means we can open up the translation process to everyone.

I’ve been answering a lot of emails about how this process works so I thought I would outline a tutorial here on the blog. If you’re familiar with GitHub, much of this will be stuff you already know. You will need a (free) GitHub account which you can get at github.com.

This tutorial also shows only one way for this process to work. It is also possible to clone the Galaxy Zoo repo on your own machine and run the app locally to test it out. That will no doubt help with checking the translation and understanding the context of all the translatable text; however, this guide shows a way to translate Galaxy Zoo that does not require you to install any additional software or run any code.

After you have completed the tutorial, you’ll have a new language file to translate. This bit is up to you and everyone works differently. You might want to use a nice Text Editor to help you out (we like lots of them, such as Text Wrangler, Textmate and Sublime Text 2). We are working on ways to assist with making this part less painful (for example, by auto-translating from Google Translate) and will blog when we do. Galaxy Zoo is about 1,000 lines of text and about 8,000 words. You can see a sample here:

The text shown in green here is the index keys used in the code and these must not be changed. We’ve tried to name them such that they are meaningful; to aid translation, they are grouped. The text shown here in red is the text that needs translating. It is important to keep the file structured correctly, with a return after each entry and keeping indentation as shown. If you only edit the red text in quotes you’ll be fine. This file is a CoffeeScript file, if you’re interested.

NOTE: If you are happy running Ruby scripts there is is a script to create a JSON file from the current translation. You can find this script here. If you’re working on your own machine you might find this easier]

When you have a completed translation, or when you’ve gotten as far as you can, you’ll need to send us the file by making a ‘pull request’. Make sure all your changes are saved and committed to your repo. You’ll find a ‘Pull Request’ button at the top of the forked repo in your account. Clicking this button shows something like this screen:

Sending the pull request alerts us that you have a file you want to add to the main Galaxy Zoo site. We’ll check that the code works and then find another speaker of your language who can read the translation and verify both that it works and that Galaxy Zoo will still make sense to native speakers. We’ll keep you posted via GitHub.

This process is not simple but it is possible to create translations without installing any code on your own machine. If you are comfortable with GitHub then just fork the repo and work locally, pushing back changes and sending the pull request when you’re ready. We’re keen to hear from people who are trying this and what languages they’re working on.

Good luck with your translation, and thank you! Hopefully we can open up Galaxy Zoo to many more people around the world.