RE: quality assurance of translations

["Emese Kovacs" <emese sunserv itp hu>]

Hi All,

Keld wrote:
> Hi!
>
> I wonder if we can develop some guidelines for
> quality assurance of Gnome translations.
>
> In my own translation work I see that
> there are a number of problems when I go and
> use the translated module. It is far from
> enough just to translate the .po files.
>
> What I do today is:
>
> run msgfmt -v -c on the  po file
> Spellcheck it.
>
> Sometimes the module, if it is a new translation,
> is sent to the Danish team for comments.
>
> Sometimes I run the program and checks the bar texts.
>
> I would like to do something systematic about it,
> and also have a way to manage this, that is I need to
> see which .po files that has been thru which tests.
>
> I would like at least the following problems to be
> addressed:
>
> spelling errors

ispell (pospell) and human proofreaders. We don't have
ispell for Hungarian, too bad for us.

> grammatical spelling problems

Human proofreaders. Cooperation of developers may be
handy, if bad grammar comes from an i18n problem

> consistent use of terms.

Human proofreader. Use of translation memories, but we
won't have this option for 1.4.

> checking of validity of error messages
> checking of nonconflict of shortcuts
> checking of enough room for texts
> checking for non-translated texts

Human testers. For this, we need a beta release (or perview release)
to be distributed to native language testers.

> checking for menus and icon texts
> management of reviews - how many persons, when done

Yes. It would be best to have a web site for this (for languages
which request it). It would also be nice to have a website with
glossary people listed. Preferably under the gtp web site.

Speaking of web sites.
At www.gnome.hu/hu/db.php3 there is a possibility to search po
files for specific strings. You can search msgstrs (Hungarians) or msgids.
I found this helpful for keeping (trying to keep) translations consistent.
It may also be helpful to glossary people.
By the way, developers should also try to keep English strings consistent.
It is worth searching for "Bonobo" in msgids. There are a couple of ways to
say
"Could not initialize Bonobo!"
(for example, using TMs is great, when the English strings are consistant)
If anybody is interrested in the script, I can send it, or I can upload it
to the
gnome-i18n module.

QA of translations is great.
I am just thinking about how to do it for Hungarian.
Anybody knows anything about a beta release of 1.4?
I would like to have a 100% translated (at least application po files and
gnome-core+gnome-applets docs) *and* QAed Gnome 1.4, but,
as this takes time, I would need the list of packages that will be
part of it.
Anybody has any idea about how long we will have
between the first beta release and the final release?
At least estimations?

>
> I thought that maybe Sun had some input to this.

Well, I am not Sun, but I hope to have said something useful :-)

Cheers,
Emese

>
> Kind regards
> keld
>
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