[:en]This blogpost is a brief introduction on the final project I completed together with my two other teammates this semester for our website localization course. My teammates and I chose AngularJS (or more specifically, Angular Translate), a JavaScript based framework which can be used to localize small web apps. Besides presenting this technology we actually completed the localization of a contact form using AngularJS.
The first challenge for the final project we met is choosing the topic. We had thought about introducing a CMS at the very beginning, but after realizing we had already covered quite a few CMS topics this semester, we wanted to do something unique and challenging. That’s how we landed on AngularJS. We went really slow at the very beginning, because it’s a completely new topic to us. The concern we had then was that the topic we chose might be too complex for us on the part of time, what if we still didn’t get the hang of AngularJS by the due date, how were we able to present it to the class, let alone completing an actual localization project. Therefore I actually looked into a few CMS as Plan B providing that we couldn’t meet our time schedule of the project. Anyway, we were lucky to make it on time in the end and didn’t change our topic.
The second challenge we met is deciding on how far we can go, namely whether to merely introduce a technical concept, or actually do the localization part with the technology. If we would like to do the localization, what type of projects should we look into? We discussed the options of localizing a real website, a web-based video game, or even a web app, and we actually tried each of them. None of them turns out to be suitable for us, so finally we decided on a more feasible solution-localizing a contact form, which is more of a proof-of-concept project.
For my part, what I did at the very beginning was to search for and find suitable AngularJS tutorials and documentation. Since we need to present this technology to the class, at least we ourselves have to be extremely familiar with it. Therefore I did quite some knowledge preparation work at the beginning. I’ve looked into a few resources including video tutorials on Lynda.com, documentation on w3school, getting started manual on Angular-translate website, some Chinese blogposts on AngularJS. I also found out that YouTube is also a great resource for help. Once it’s done, we started learning the technology individually and then discussing the difficulties and problems together. That took us quite a lot of time to completely digest the materials.
The real headache is deciding on the actual project. We focused too much on localizing a real website, so we had several trials and errors with the exercise materials (like Tesla) from website class at the beginning. Then it suddenly occurred to us that AngularJS Translate is not meant for high-volume localization, so we moved to web games. We experimented with Flappy Text, but the problem was we didn’t know how to wrap the text in JS file then. There was no mentioning for how to i18n text in JS file in the tutorial. We got somewhat stuck and there was still no solution even if we googled it and reached out for help.
Later when I was watching a video tutorial on Lynda it suddenly occurred to me why not localizing a small web app, like contact form. The localization volume is perfect for AngularJS, besides, there is fairly detailed and straightforward documentations on w3school for that. So I tried out writing a localization request form in w3school(see below). However it didn’t look quite good. We started to think whether it is really necessary to write a form on our own and if there are some open resources available online. We did find some by googling AngularJS contact form. This has saved us quite a lot of time.
Then we went on to localize the form and it went pretty smoothly except the problem of button function and i18n of text in placeholder. With the great devotion and efforts of each team member we were finally able to deliver the project complete and on time, which is a great relief to us
I have learnt a lot from this final project not only in terms of knowledge but something more important. That is never dare to challenge yourself and never dare to reach out for help. If you don’t challenge yourself, you never know your limit, and in the process you cannot simply rely on your own to achieve something. These two I believe are the two key factors that help to bring a successful completion of this project.[:]
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