Re: Making it easier on translators

[Keld Jørn Simonsen <keld dkuug dk>]

On Mon, Nov 20, 2000 at 02:17:46PM -0100, Hector Garcia wrote:
> Hi all
> 
> I have seen some things that I considers to be a problem.  These are
> related to the translators (I am a translator myself) of the gnome
> modules, wich I consider that they do a very important job to make GNOME
> as widely spread as possible.
> We should remember that translators don't have to know any programing
> language to do a good job.
> 
> Problems:
> 
> * You have to learn to use CVS (yes it is very simple, but not to
> everyone)

I agree it could be made simpler.

> * You have to learn how to use branches in CVS (not so easy to
> everybody)
> 
> * You need space in your HD for having a copy of the whole module to be
> able to update your copy of .po to translate.
> 
> * You need to do a lot of "cvs update" just to know if one line changed
> and need to be translated.

This could also be made a lot simpler. Pablo from MandrakeSoft has done
some work along what you have outlined above. Maybe you could use
some of his setups. It includes:

- updating all the .po files, so you do not have to do this yourself

- this also removes the need to download a lot form the CVS to build the
  updated po files. And you do not need a lot of HD to store the cvs.

- I think he also merges  new stuff with a translation database per language.
> 
> Possible solution:
> 
> * Create an automated system to generate the .po files for every
> language, that send a letter to translator when a certain number of
> fuzzy or undone translation are found in the file (you should be able to
> conf this)

yes (Pablo has something there)

> * The system should be able to mange branches and make it transparent to
> translators.

That would be good.

> * Have a web UI to get your .po file, to give it back once translated,
> to allow you to configure some things (like sending you letters when a
> new version of the .po file is available and there is so many changes)

Also something I would like to see.

> * To let developers set a translation to be most wanted because a
> release is due soon.

Very good idea.
> 
> I believe that with this solution we drop down the entry point for
> people to help in gnome and we will have more translators and more
> language in more modules.

I would also like to see that desktop messages be included.
And actually, as the Danish team now approaches the 99 % completion :-),
some stuff to handle man pages translation and other documentation stuff.
This includes statistics to survey the translation project, and also
tools to handle updating, including identifying stuff to be translated.
We need something as good as the .po mechanisms.
> 
> If you thing as I do that this that I said is a real problem and that
> what I proposed may be a good solution, I will start working on such a
> system that I want to do using: Perl, PhP3 (or 4) and Postgresql. I
> already have some people willing to help me with this so I think it
> would not take too long to have it ready.
> 
> So, what you people think?

All in all very good ideas! 
I think we should coordinate and reuse what other projects in the
field has done, including mandrake, gnu and kde.

Kind regards
keld

_______________________________________________
gnome-hackers mailing list
gnome-hackers gnome org
http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-hackers