Sorting out strings before they are translated for 2.7/8

[Telsa Gwynne <hobbit aloss ukuu org uk>]

It is six months to the day that I sent a similar message to
gnome-hackers, gnome-doc-list, and gnome-i18n. This problem
is still here. So this time I am sending to desktop-devel-list.

There are a number of surreal strings buried in the po files
which cause hell for translators. Some of them are blatently
user-visible and thus probably need polishing up anyway.
Others are the sort of thing you only see if you are messing
around with gconf-editor. 

And what usually happens in a release cycle is that translators
work through, get stuck on the nasty ones, and leave those for
later/last. And then either guess, or ask the developer what
it means. By the time we know the meaning, the string freeze
is upon us, and the bug in bugzilla sits there until the 
next development cycle. And gets forgotten.

And then the next team comes along, and gets stuck on the very
same strings. And the next team goes through the same cycle. 

In the end, every new team has to struggle with the same
strings causing the same problems. For the sort of thing I
am talking about, have a look at my original (long) message at

http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome-i18n/2004-January/msg00066.html

..and then add these to the examples there:

http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=137517
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=113932
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=135281
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=101265
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=120335
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=124701
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=133940

There are also a variety of other problems in some strings:

http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=115633
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=126667
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=113933
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=137431
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=133903
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=137485

This is a random collection. There are plenty more where
those came from. (They came from a bugzilla query for any
bug with string, i18n or l10n as a keyword. That gave me
259 bugs, although not all were the sort of thing above.) 

_Lots_ of these have something like "I have a solution but
we need to wait until after the string freeze". 

Well, we're not in a string freeze now... 

But looking at http://www.gnome.org/start/2.7/, we have
only six weeks before we shall be in a string freeze again,
and one of those weeks is GUADEC. And the proposed modules
which get accepted will be arriving soon. And that will
then be the focus for many translators. 

I think it would be helpful to both translators and to
English-speakers who have trouble enough wondering what
they mean to sort the problems about out. Not as the 
proposed modules arrive. Now.

If you are inspired to go and fix some of these strings,
there are two sources of information as well as bugzilla. 

There are guidelines in the HIG about where you should have
sentences and where you should have sentence fragments.

There are also some nice guidelines in the Gnome
Documentation Project Style Guide under the heading 
"Writing for Translation": 

http://developer.gnome.org/documents/style-guide/
http://developer.gnome.org/documents/style-guide/c1795.html

If you don't have time to read those, read this list of twenty 
things to keep in mind when writing for translation. The rants 
in my original email about "Noun noun noun noun" are covered 
by the very first one:

http://developer.gnome.org/documents/style-guide/x1829.html

I should note that some of the problems in the original
email are now fixed. But not all. Not even half, I fear.

And please read that original email before fixing stuff, 
because there is a list there of words translators hate. 
Some of them ("control", "render", "display") seem rather 
popular with developers. It would be bad to put them into 
even more places without putting comments (which get picked 
up by gettext and put into the po files) by them about which 
of several meanings is intended.

And finally, to reiterate. Lots of those bugs have fixes
attached. They were just blocked by a string freeze. It
would be bad to leave them so long that they are blocked
again.

Telsa