Re: Modified strings up to release date

[Jorge González González <aloriel gmail com>]

El lun, 22-09-2008 a las 17:43 +0200, Claude Paroz escribió:
> Le lundi 22 septembre 2008 à 09:53 -0500, Shaun McCance a écrit :
> > On Mon, 2008-09-22 at 12:45 +0200, Claude Paroz wrote:
> > > Le lundi 22 septembre 2008 à 11:01 +0200, Andre Klapper a écrit :
> > > > Am Montag, den 22.09.2008, 07:01 +0200 schrieb Jorge González González:
> > > > > there have been modifications of document strings up to the very same
> > > > > date of release, this is very sad. We already talked about "freezing"
> > > > > somehow doc translations so we could do our job, but developers keep
> > > > > updating it up to today.
> > > > > 
> > > > > I know there is no freeze for docs, but still, you, developers, cannot
> > > > > think we can translate like this.
> > > > 
> > > > I think we have this discussion in release-team every time we meet.
> > > > It boils down to the problem "Having better (updated) english
> > > > documentation vs. having more translated (but outdated) documentation".
> > > > Pick your poison.
> > > > For me it looks less useful to have translated but outdated docs.
> > > 
> > > Sorry Andre, but I completely disagree here. The choice is not the one
> > > you presented. I could say the same with other freezes. E.g. with the UI
> > > freeze : do you want better and more polished UI rather than well tested
> > > and documented but minimal and uglier ones because of the freeze...
> > 
> > As I've pointed out before, this analogy doesn't hold water.
> > It's not a matter of making the documentation more polished.
> > It's a matter of making it correct.
> > 
> > If a program needs a string addition to give a user information
> > in the case of some error, that's polish.  If the documentation
> > is telling you to click on button XYZ, but button XYZ does not
> > exist in the program, that's just flat out wrong.  There is no
> > point in translating that sentence, because there are exactly
> > zero users who would be helped by reading it.
> 
> I don't contest the need to correct this, but the timeframe to do it.
> Moreover, freezes have exception processes, so obvious and critical
> errors could still be committed.
> 
> > > It's a matter of process. When you put a freeze in place, you're simply
> > > telling people that they have to do their job in a specific timeframe.
> > > The objective here is to have updated AND translated docs.
> > 
> > Stormy had a great blog post a few days back, talking about
> > how project releases are constrained by time, resources, and
> > scope.  We currently have a fixed amount of time, and have a
> > very difficult time increasing our resources (i.e. writers).
> > Our scope (i.e. documentation quality) suffers.
> > 
> > If you decrease our time without increasing our resources,
> > documentation quality will suffer.
> 
> Please, please... we're talking about a some (3?) days freeze in a
> schedule of six months.
I totally agree.

> 
> > Please don't claim there is no respect for translators, as
> > you did in a previous email.  That's pure flamebait.
> 
> When you pass tenth of hours to translate a big document and you see
> half of it unvalidated by an update some hours before the release, try
> to imagine the feeling of the translator...
> 
> >   I put
> > a lot of work (along with Danilo) into making translators
> > able to do documentation with po files.  I wrote an entire
> > DocBook toolchain in part because the existing solutions
> > didn't serve our translators well.
and we are verey grateful, belive me, now translating the help files
is much more easy, that's probably why there are more files translated.

> > 
> > I have put a lot of development time into making sure you
> > can have properly translated documentation.  But I will
> > not take precious time away from our few valiant writers,
> > just so you can have a translated version of a document
> > that's not even correct or helpful in English.
well, obviously is good to have updated documentation, but if you can't
read it because you don't speak/read English, you probably care the
same, which is nothing.

> 
> And you know that I'm also one of these few (albeit a minor one).
> 
> We both defend our respective position (doc writer/translator). IMHO
> both are somewhat valid but unfortunately they conflict... and I don't
> see this thread going to change anything right now.
> 
> Claude
> 
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-- 
Jorge González González <aloriel gmail com>
Weblog: http://aloriel.no-ip.org
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