Re: PO-based Documentation Translation

[Keld Jørn Simonsen <keld dkuug dk>]

On Wed, Oct 01, 2003 at 01:24:10PM +0200, Ismael Olea wrote:
> El mié, 01-10-2003 a las 12:41, Danilo Segan escribió:
> 
> > > I think you are confusing a bit some detail. The reference tool here
> > > is not Emacs or our libre software favorite tools. You should study  
> > > how the real world works outside. This means you should focuse on  
> > > Trados, Wordfast, Transit, Deja Vu and so on, which are the real  
> > > tools than professional/commercial translator uses.
> > 
> > I think you're confusing some details too ;-)
> 
> Not too.
> 
> > So, all those tools you mention might  
> > be really good for me, but I'd probably have to invest a month of my  
> > time to get to know them and become productive with them.
> 
> I didn't say you/we should _use_ that tools. Mainly because they are
> commercial and expensive.
> 
> (And if I really said that, I was betrayed by my poor English :-)
> 
> The idea is _learn_ how they work and how professional translator work
> for better use of the time of brave volunteers as you.
> 
> 
> > But the "profession" is also usually educated in translation process  
> > quite a bit more than the average volunteer translator, so it's  
> > understandable that they're doing it more "professionaly".
> 
> This is why some of us are trying to educated volunteers for better
> work.
> 
> Our users deserves the best quality available and there are some things
> to learn out there.

Probably gettext/.po system is some of the best software around for
translations. At least it is some of the most used and most productive.
If we compare Linux to other big translation projects, like MS Windows,
Linux has more applications translated than Windows (eg most systems
administration software is translated in Linux, while not in Windows -
Windows server 2003 is only in English, the Windows XP Plus package is
only in English) and Linux is translated to more languages than Windows.

I hesitate to compare with Sun products as I know little about them
these days, but I would imagine that Sun products are much less
translated than MS windows. Also Sun products are less present in the
"real world" than Windows and Linux, more than 90 % of all Unix systems
in the world are Linux systems, and on my fairly well used site, there
are more than a hundred times more Linux users than SunOS users.
So as far as I can see, Linux is "real world", whils Sun is something in
a niche.

If you look at open source translation tools, it also seems like gettext
is the king. Comparing to some big transltion projects not using gettext
like Mozilla and OpenOffice.Org, linux applications seems to be better
translated and translated to more languages. I note there that
OpenOffice.org recently has changed to use .po files at least for some
languages. 

The .po file format and tools associated with it thus have a proven
track record in the marketplace as one of the best technologies for
getting the translation job done for big translation projects.

let's build on that succes, make it better by all means, but I hesitate
to switch to something that has not stood the test of time, on big
translation projects, like the .po file format.

.po files rulez!

> 
> > Btw, if we're to switch to any new format, I'd really like it to  
> > support a bit more of stuff I care about: like translations depending  
> > on the gender, context markers etc.
> 
> I suggest to study how Trados and others resolve these and other
> problems. Maybe they are solved.

Trados is commercial software. We cannot build anything in gnome on
commercial software.

But of cause we can get ideas from it (as long as they are not coverede
by software patents).

Best regards
keld