Re: Promoting greater integration between developers/writers/I18N :)

[Janne <jan moren lucs lu se>]

On Thu, 2003-06-26 at 13:24, Breda McColgan wrote:

> TOPIC ONE
> =========
> A lively discussion arose about the best way to handle errors found in
> the po files by translators. One translator said that he added an extra
> comment in the po file itself, immediately before each such error, and
> sent the commented po file back to the developer. The developers seemed
> to prefer to have bugs logged in Bugzilla. 
> 
> I suggested a combined approach: 
>  o The translator opens one Bugzilla bug for each po file, and 
>     lists in that bug all of the problems found in that po file.
>  o The translator adds the Bugzilla bug number to the po file.
> 
> This approach gives all translators immediate access to the problems
> found by previous translators, reducing duplication of effort. When the
> bug is logged in Bugzilla, both translators and developers can easily
> track the bug. 
> 
> Writers could follow a similar approach when they find problems in the
> UI, as writers are usually the first "users" to examine every aspect of
> the UI.
> 
> 
> What do you think? Would developers prefer to have multiple problems
> logged in a single bug, or one bug per problem?

As a translator, I would really want to avoid filing one bug per
problem. As we are looking at the application string by string, many
issues we find are comparatively trivial (spelling or capitalization
errors and such), and going through the hassle of opening a new bug for
each one is frankly too much work for it to be done. Also, it will mean
a pretty significant number of additional bugs that are difficult to
navigate and search in.

So far, I have collected a bunch of issues and then filed them in one go
when they become numerous enough. The problem is with large apps that
may accumulate quite a lot of issues; the bug report is likely to become
voluminous and perhaps difficult for the developers and other
translators to navigate. Even a trivial issue ends up being five to ten
lines of bugreport, and when you have several dozen (or many more), it
becomes quite a large mass of text.

Then there are more "fundamental" issues, like the choice of
terminology. I am not sure if such things should be bunched together
with trivial stuff or if they warrant a bug of their own. An argument in
favour of filing them separately is that this impinges on both
translation, documentation and maybe UI design, and deserves a more
thourough looking at than some misplaced commas. The question there is
how to make all the affected peoploe aware of such issues as they crop
up?

Basically I am for any resolution that makes developers happy - if
developers are happy they fix string issues, and fixed string issues
makes translators happy. Happy translators feel they do something
worthwhile and do more and better translations, which makes users happy.
Happy users tell their friends to try out Gnome too, which makes
everybody happy. 

The only caveat is, as I mentioned, that we not need to open a new bug
for every single thing.



-- 

Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.

Tel.    +46-046 222 8588             Dr. Janne Morén (mr)
Home:   +46-046 211 4973             Dept. of Cognitive Science
Fax:    +46-046 222 9758             Kungshuset, Lund
                                     S-222 22 Lund, Sweden