Repository: https://github.com/apache/cordova

Project details:

Cordova or Apache Cordova is a framework used for native mobile applications development, it contains different APIs to facilitate the user's experience, but what's a native mobile app in the first place ?

Well, it can regarded as a mobile app developed using only one mobile programming language using a very specific source code, for example if we developed a native app that works on Android phones, we should write a different code to have the same app working on iOS phones, if you think about it. That's definitely wasted energy !

One can say, why we should develop native apps on the first place ? wouldn't be better to use a hybrid applications that work on several systems and cross-platforms ? 

That's true if you want to develop quickly the app but in terms of performance, native apps are way better, faster, have more features, have better access to the device native functions and offer bigger freedom in the choice of commands. What Cordova offers you is a chance of getting those benefits of the native apps and at the same time not wasting your energy and time on writing new source codes if you desire to extend your app. To achieve this task, Cordova allows their users to develop mobile apps using web programming languages (HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript). 

In Apache Cordova's official site, the overview states that this project is destined for people who are: 

- a mobile developer and want to extend an application across more than one platform, without having to re-implement it with each platform's language and tool set.

- a web developer and want to deploy a web app that's packaged for distribution in various app store portals.

- a mobile developer interested in mixing native application components with a WebView (special browser window) that can access device-level APIs, or if you want to develop a plugin interface between native and WebView components.

Why did I choose this project ?

Well for couple of reasons, first and foremost is because I intend to develop my own mobile app in the future, second I wanted a long project to take my time working on it and not having to choose another one for a while and finally because the project is really helpful for many developers.

Contribution Specifications:

The Translation done was from English to the Arabic language.

I will try to ease the work of the moderator as much as possible, so first of all the two things I want to say is that many technical words are still new to the arabic language regarding the fact that most programming languages are developed in english so a word may sound very unusual and weird at the beginning but once it's used frequently, everything becomes natural. The second thing is I wanted to emphasize on is the fact that while translating I tried to avoid translating word to word and focus on putting a smooth nice comprehensible text. 

The first thing I did is to found a dictionary for technical words, luckily for me I found this nice one: English Arabic Technical Computing Dictionary, I advise my fellow arabic translators to also use it in order to have a more homogeneous translation going on but still, this is only a personal opinion.

Now the biggest problem I've face wasn't in the translation itself but regarding the alignment of the text. After talking with the language moderator, I've decided to keep the technical words in english to keep more originality and because many words will sound pretty weird in Arabic, but doing this means mixing arabic and english words in the same text and lots of alignment problems came with it.

I managed to solve most of the problems using RLM and LRM which are two special characters which are used to align the text. RLM is encoded at U+200F while LRM is encoded at U+200E .

I started translating the README.md and cordova-cli/doc/bash.md files (Not so easy as a beginning :p ). There are few words that I've chose and I've wanted to share them with you:

• Hook: In the dictionary, it's translated into 'موضع إضافة فالروتين' but this word if really complicated so I've decided to use 'رابط' instead (Although 'link' will also have the same translation in Arabic).
• Asset: I've decided to use 'وسائل' 
• Parameters: 'الموسطات' The word may sound unusual but I've found it in the dictionary
• Artifact: I've translated it into 'أدوات' 
• Installing from master: First i've translated it into 'تثبيت من الرئيسي' but it doesn't sound right for me, so I've decided to ask for your advice.
• 'Your Blanket: config.xml' : 'بطانيتك: config.xml' ?

There were many unusual words that I've encountered so my whole work was originally based on the dictionary (with little modifications for liability purposes )

Word count:

Approximately 1120 words...

Proof of Authorship:

My Crowdin Profile: https://crowdin.com/profile/Fancybrothers/

My GitHub Profile: https://github.com/Fancybrothers/

Cordova on Crowdin: https://crowdin.com/project/cordova/ar#

References:

The project's overview