Re: Making it easier on translators

[mawarkus t-online de (Matthias Warkus)]

+++ Tue, Nov 21, 2000 at 04:24:30PM +0000 +++
Robert Brady e-mails me. Film at 11. Reply right now, after the break.
> On Mon, 20 Nov 2000, Matthias Warkus wrote:
> 
> > No. No way should translations be created by people who don't even
> > know what kind of program they're translating and haven't tested their
> > translations.
> > 
> > Translating a program should require making the CVS version compile
> > and testing it. Something should block any commits for untested .po
> > files :)
> 
> This is of course nonsense. :)  It's quite possible to ftp your .pot, fill
> in all the fields, compile it to $prefix/locale/LL/whatever.mo, and then
> test it, without ever seeing a line of source coed.

Point taken (although I, for one, would never translate something the
source code of which I can't see).

However, translating up-to-date software and testing it requires (as
someone else already pointed out) to have that special up-to-date
version of it running on your machine, whether from CVS or not. And I
don't think the barrier created by CVS is high enough to warrant
circumventing it by mass-generating up-to-date binary releases of all
kinds of software just so translators can save some disk space and be
lazy (not being required to learn CVS). Those binary releases would
have to come at least in RPM, Debian and .tar.gz form, which would
require a massiv effort to keep all of the package-creation foo in
order all the time.

One might argue that translations should only be done when a release
is close, i.e. that a need-for-translation announcement would then be
accompanied by a binary pre-release. As neat as this would be, I think
this would be way into diminishing returns land -- a huge effort for
slightly higher return. Is there even a single translator who is barred
from doing GNOME translations purely by the need to check out modules?
Also, as far as I can see, the tradition is making lots and lots of
small updates to .po files to keep them up-to-date, doing just a
little polish and QA when a release is due. Oh, and by the way, it
seems most teams already 'employ' enough translators. In the DE team,
e.g., there is so much personnel that human resources are a non-issue
and coordination is the major problem.

My conclusion: The present solution for access to .pot files is
satisfactory and there are other areas in the GNOME project
infrastructure where improvements are much more necessary. A central
CVS module table, for example, noting the purpose and next scheduled
release date of every module, would already do a mighty lot for
translations and many other efforts.

mawa
-- 
I am willing to love all mankind, except an American.
                                                        -- Sam Johnson