Re: Making it easier on translators

[Christian Rose <menthos menthos com>]

Hector Garcia wrote:

> I have seen some things that I considers to be a problem.  These are
> related to the translators (I am a translator myself) of the gnome
> modules, wich I consider that they do a very important job to make GNOME
> as widely spread as possible.
> We should remember that translators don't have to know any programing
> language to do a good job.
> 
> Problems:
> * You have to learn to use CVS (yes it is very simple, but not to
> everyone)

I think this is not much of a problem. Yes, picking up the basics is 
simple, and you only have to learn some of it to be able to contribute 
translations.

I asked stupid questions on IRC to know how to use cvs, I was terribly 
confused for a couple of days after that when I first tried to use it 
but not since then (this was 5 months ago). I quickly learned to even 
enjoy cvs as opposed to other, mail-robot-based, translation systems I 
had used before, because with cvs you're always getting the latest if 
you want the latest, and there's no "stupid developers they forgot to 
include my translation" part if you put it directly in cvs.


> * You have to learn how to use branches in CVS (not so easy to
> everybody)

No, branches are messy, but I think whenever something has to be done 
against a different branch this should be explicitly stated and also how 
to do this. How to use different branches is also explained with an 
example on http://developer.gnome.org/tools/cvs.html.


> * You need space in your HD for having a copy of the whole module to be
> able to update your copy of .po to translate.

Again, I don't think this is a problem. Disks are cheap, and if one 
scraps some of the bad mp3s on the disk there is suddenly room for a lot 
of additional modules. I think the problem is slow internet connections, 
but faster connections are becoming more and more common.


> * You need to do a lot of "cvs update" just to know if one line changed
> and need to be translated.

No. I always just check 
http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gtp/status/status.shtml to know if 
something has to be updated (it is updated every night). The only thing 
that I can think of that would make this simpler is an enhancement to 
the script to inform by mail every night if something has to be updated.


> Possible solution:
> * Create an automated system to generate the .po files for every
> language, that send a letter to translator when a certain number of
> fuzzy or undone translation are found in the file (you should be able to
> conf this)

This could be made as an enhancement to the existing status script which 
generates the above web page.


> * The system should be able to mange branches and make it transparent to
> translators.

I have no idea how this can be made possible. Branches are branches to 
every developer, and there's a reason why there are branches: changes in 
one of them shouldn't affect the other. I don't see how hiding 
"branchiness" is at all possible.


> * Have a web UI to get your .po file, to give it back once translated,
> to allow you to configure some things (like sending you letters when a
> new version of the .po file is available and there is so many changes)

Yes, nice idea.


> * To let developers set a translation to be most wanted because a
> release is due soon.

This is already handled today by developers mailing the gnome-i18n 
mailing list, and often additionally also informing the #i18n irc 
channel. Yes, it can't be enforced, but neither could setting a 
"translation most wanted" status be.


> I believe that with this solution we drop down the entry point for
> people to help in gnome and we will have more translators and more
> language in more modules.

I disagree slightly ;-)
I don't think the entry level is too high - people can always contribute 
translations just by sending them to people who can commit.


> If you thing as I do that this that I said is a real problem and that
> what I proposed may be a good solution, I will start working on such a
> system that I want to do using: Perl, PhP3 (or 4) and Postgresql. I
> already have some people willing to help me with this so I think it
> would not take too long to have it ready.

I think it would be nice if it could be integrated with the already 
existing status script, because some of the functionality (checking all 
translations in cvs) is already there.


Cheers
Christian



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Christian Rose
http://www.menthos.com                    	    menthos@menthos.com
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