Re: Translation statistics for Gnome 2.4 desktop and developer platform

[Danilo Segan <dsegan gmx net>]

понедељак, 18. август 2003. 04:37:49 CEST — Luis Villa написа:
> 
> I can't speak for everyone else, of course, but while I'm really
> interested (especially close to release) I'm not sure it's worth 
> doing every week. Maybe right before or right after every release?
> 

Yes, of course, anything that you find appropriate -- I just said that 
I can commit myself to doing it weekly.

> I guess what I'm curious about is change over time- it seems like a
> lot fewer languages will be in the 90-95% range than there were for 
> 2.2. Maybe I'm mis-remembering, though.
> 

Ok, I haven't been involved with Gnome project as a translator at that 
time (though I've been a user since pre 1.0 times ;-), but I can notice 
a couple of things.

Base Gnome desktop and Gnome developer platform has grown by around 40% 
(from ~11k strings to ~15k) since Gnome 2.2, and that, by itself (in my 
opinion), is the main reason for the "drop" in number of teams with 
closer to done translations.

Basically, 90-95% range in Gnome 2.2 corresponds to 63-67% range in 
Gnome 2.4 (if we count the absolute number of strings). It's not that 
translators were any worse (they were even better I would guess, since 
more that 30 teams are over 63%), it's just that Gnome has grown very 
much.


I don't have the resources to even try to track the stats all the way 
back to the 2.2 release time (I'm on dial-up connection) -- if that's 
what you meant by "change over time". Still I may provide a "change 
over time" in the future.


> If I'm correct- does this indicate we need a longer string freeze in
> 2.6 or what?

Perhaps that might be a good solution.

OTOH, if a final list of modules to be included in Gnome 2.6 is 
announced sooner, translators could sort out their priorities earlier.

At the same time, another important reason is the amount of change 
between Gnome 2.2 and Gnome 2.4 (see above). So, if Gnome 2.6 would 
stay sufficiently similar to Gnome 2.4 (in terms of strings, of 
course), there would be no need for a longer string freeze.

Many of the Gnome 2.2 translations were updated *after* the initial 
release (as a matter of fact, many of the teams only started working at 
that time, like Serbian, Arabic, I believe Welsh too)


The other problem could be the way typos and small omissions are 
handled. This is another topic, so I won't go into details. It's just 
that fixing 20 typos in English original makes eg. 800 (40 languages 
times 20) messages "untranslated" (or "fuzzy", which is practically the 
same). There must be a better way to handle this (perhaps having a 
en_US translation with corrected strings, and keeping "C" for 
"illiterate ennglish" :-).

Ok, this is not the real issue, but it does create much more work for 
translators who cannot dedicate enough time to check the translations 
every day.

> Anyway, thanks for the general stats, Danilo- I'd definitely love to
> see them more often, and probably it wouldn't hurt to see them go to
> desktop-devel-list as well. More groups should do as the 
> accessibility team has been doing and posting bugs/stats to the main 
> list.
> 

I can continue with these kinds of statistics, and I can also include a 
"changed from last update" data. It seems that others are interested in 
this too, so the next update will have those "movers of the week" (nah, 
I don't consider making it that fancy, just the change of percentage 
would do ;-)

Also, this will go weekly to desktop-devel and gnome-i18n lists. Should 
I include anybode else? Does the release team care about this, or would 
they care more for, like, a montly report?


Cheers,
Danilo