How do I translate Alice?

Hello.

I'm a high school teacher. I have just discovered Alice and I am excited about the possibilities to use it in the classroom.

However, my students are Spanish-speaking people with no English skills. It would be necessary to have Alice translated into Spanish. I am willing to do the translation myself (and then make it freely available).

Please, can anyone tell me how can I do that?

Thanks in advance,

Finsals Collons

I think that would require the source code which may or may not be availiable, either way I'm pretty sure that's a tough job.

I believe I have read somewhere that the source code is available.

[litomd]

Well I have been trying to post for a while now, lets see if I succeed this time.

The Alice source code is available. Yes it is.

Keep in mind however that it is not just a matter of finding every string in english and replacing it with the spanish equivalent. There is no easy way to do that. You would probably need to do a thorough revision of the code and the meaning of each message, sometimes you would need more than one translation for one message.

And remember that Alice 3.0 is coming in the near future, so your work may be render obsolete in the short time.

Regards,

Leonel

[litomd]

Hi !!

Well I finally could post !!!! This is good !!!

We have a research project here in Universidad Rafael LandÃ*var in Guatemala. We are testing Alice and trying to develop a methodology for teaching programming with it to the equivalent here of High School.

What I can say from what I have seen, is that you can translate Alice at three levels:

1. Translate the language: bad idea, you can find an equivalent for DoTogether (something like "HacerDeJunto" o "EjecutarSimultaneo") but most of the sentences in an Alice programm are calls to methods, setting or using properties, using functions, and, unless you translate all the objects' methods, properties and functions, you will end up with a mixture of english and spanish in the code. Some sort of spanglish ("La Alis" would be a nice name for it).

2. Translate the interface: this is also a titanic task as much as the previous one. As I said in my previous post it is not just finding every string in english and replace it with the equivalent spanish. By the time you may have a working beta Alice 3.0 may already be released and your effort be... outdated at best.

3. Translate the tutorials: this is the best idea I think. The tutorials (based on "stencils" as long as I know) are a much less daunting task, and its effect may yield much better results. By the time Alice 3.0 is released you can come up with a quick version of the tutorials and be hero again.

Anyway, source code is available right from www.alice.org.

Regards,

Leonel

With regard to the third option mentioned in the earlier post by Leonel, if you do decide to translate tutorials, I will be pleased to offer my set of Alice tutorials, slides, practice tests, etc., to serve as a royalty-free test case. You will find them at http://www.dickbaldwin.com/tocalice.htm

Should you decide to do that, I will be happy to address any technical questions that you may have. However, since I know absolutely no Spanish, I can't help with the actual translation.

Let me know if you decide that you might like to do that and I will provide a modified copyright statement to accommodate the translation.

My email addess is Baldwin@DickBaldwin.com. If you send an email message, include the word Alice in the subject to get it past my spam blocker. I receive about 35,000 spam and virus messages each month and have been forced to use a very aggressive spam blocking system.

Dick Baldwin

[litomd]

Dick,

Thank you a lot for offering your tutorials. We will consider them you can be sure.

I will try to get a message past through your spam filter.

Regards,

Leonel

[litomd]

By the way.

Our research has brought middle school professors in contact with Alice, both during the study (they come with the students for an experimental practice at our labs) and also during specific tutorials with them.

They have started showing interest in teaching programming with Alice.

Dick: can I pass your tutorial link to those asking for more material? Can anyone do that? I think many in Latin America may want them.

Regards,

Leonel

Leonel,

Yes, please do pass the link to my online tutorials along to anyone who may wish to use them.

Dick Baldwin

[litomd]

Thank you Dick !!!

I will let you know if anyone here uses your material.

Leonel