Re: About translating documents (.xml/.sgml) in GNOME

[Malcolm Tredinnick <malcolm commsecure com au>]

[Trimming the CC list, since everybody participating is on the relevant
lists.]

On Mon, Feb 03, 2003 at 11:38:30AM +1000, Bernd Groh wrote:
> Christian wrote:
> >I've yet to experience such a situation where extra paragraphs are
> >needed (perhaps because I'm only experienced with translating into
> >Swedish),
> 
> Me too. In some cases it might be helpful, but I believe that often 
> there's a way to avoid it. If you are a translator, for example, who 
> likes to add a lot of new major tags, then well, maybe PO is not the way 
> to go for you. That's the reason why I said that IMO, adding new 
> paragraphs, etc. by the translator shouldn't be allowed in the first 
> place (at least not by default). I know a lot of people doing 
> cjk-translations, and none of them requires any new tags either.
> 
> >but wouldn't it be possible to add extra paragrahps as needed
> >in the msgstr at the appropriate places, and have the conversion tool
> >accomodate for that when merging back? An example:
[...]
> But how does the tool know it's a paragraph you want to add? What if you 
> are currently processing an entry? Does that mean you want to add 
> another paragraph in the entry, or do you maybe want to add another 
> entry? And what if you want to add another listitem, how do you 
> distinguish? With some new tags you introduce into PO-files? I 
> personally do not like this idea at all. The po-approach is so good, 
> exactly because you don't have to worry about any structural 
> information. You simply have text-items and you translate them. IMO, 
> structural change should not be allowed, since this exactly introduces 
> an IMO disadvantage of the entire approach.
> 
> That's why I'd go two ways. PO, exclusively for documents where the 
> translation process does not incur any structural changes to the 
> document itself (which are all the documents I am working with). For 
> others, I don't think PO is (or even should be) an option. There's too 
> much change involved to the PO-method itself.

Just to let people know my thinking (particularly now that I've written
more code to implement the design): I am not going to worry about this
particular facet for the moment. I am not ruling it out, but there are
other things that should be implemented first to cover the 95% case.

I know that I was the one who originally thought this might be a
sticking point, but based on the feedback I have seen, it seems to be a
low priority issue. In a subsequent version I will revisit this issue.
In passing, I think the "two formats" method is a bit doomed, since it
runs counter to the principle of keeping things familiar and simple, but
it may turn out to be necessary.

Based on the other pertinent posts in this thread, it appears nobody has
come up with any other fundamental sticking points. A few people with
experience seem to have implicitly approved the idea, so I'm just going
for it. We'll see what happens.

Malcolm

-- 
The problem with the gene pool is that there is no lifeguard.