Re: difficulties with Gnome Translation

[Christian Rose <menthos menthos com>]

lör 2002-04-27 klockan 16.05 skrev Isam Bayazidi:
> - Template files (POT) are available through http rather than CVS.

I don't know much about this, but I suspect that the generated pot files
could be put back into cvs (in the status section) by the status script
if that would be useful. Carlos and other people knowledgeable about the
status script should know more about it. ;)


> - Template files that are available through http have inconsistent file names, 
> they are names : modulename.cvstag.pot .. and the cvs tag could be HEAD or 
> any Tag, knowing that each module got it's own tag.. while all KDE modules 
> are taged with the same tag name each release ..

Most Gnome modules are very much independant software with their own
maintainers, their own development, and their own release plans. That
said, there are guidelines for how branches should be named, but I fail
to understand how it should be possible for all modules to use the same
branch schemes since it's different software and most of them are in
different phases of development.


> - Translated PO files are inconsistent places in the module tree, checking in 
> changes is not an easy job.

How is this? I'm not aware of any module that doesn't use
module_name/po/ for storing po files, except gnome-i18n but that's a
very special case anyway.


> Please do not understand that I am to compare between KDE and Gnome, I truly 
> like the Gnome way, and highly appreciate everyones efforts in making this 
> great environment.. but I wanted to express the difficulties we faced moving 
> from KDE Traslation to Gnome Translation ..

No, I think we all appreciate the input. I am at least. :) It's
interesting to get reports about the KDE translation process. We
discussed the KDE process with a KDE developer (sorry, don't remember
the name) at GUADEC2 but the differences in the process compared to the
GNOME one are big I think (more on that later). So I think this may be
the cause why it's difficult to adapt the benefits from one system to
the other.

KDE has a vastly different translation process (this is all from my
understanding of it). They group translations from modules into larger
"metamodules" with huge pot files that the translators translate. These
ones are typically at least updated before each major KDE release. This
gives translators less headache in knowing on how to deal with cvs
branches, but it removes some of the fine-level granularity in deciding
on what to translate (if metamodule A includes important messages in the
software B but also uninteresting ones in C and D it may be difficult to
organize the work after importance). This is at least from my
understanding of it after the discussions with the KDE developer.

On the other hand, GNOME lets each application store its own
translations and lets the application always release often and
independently with its own latest translations, and the GNOME-level
cross-organization of translation is provided by the different
translation status reports that lists what module version belongs in
which GNOME release. This gives more work with cvs branches but gives
more control to the translator, that can choose more freely on what to
translate and when.

As I said, this is all my understanding of it, feel free to correct the
errors in what I described.
>From this point of view, I prefer the current GNOME model, simply
because I as a translator don't have infinite time resources and want
better control of what I choose to translate, and I think the GNOME
model gives this.
An example of this would be xscreensaver -- most of the messages in the
xscreensaver module are names and descriptions of various screensavers,
and I don't consider them to be important to translate, at least not
compared to many other UI messages that are more visible. I thus would
hate if the xscreensaver module got bundled together with other modules
in a larger meta-module -- suddenly the untranslated screensaver
messages would consume time that are better needed for more important
messages.


> and with all my respect to 
> everyones effort, it seems that KDE did a great job i18n wise and that lead 
> to have around 50 languages shiped with the latest KDE 3 release..

If I count the locales listed on the current GNOME unstable status
pages, I get the number 61 if I counted correctly.


> The KDE team realised that the ones that are doing Translation work are
> translators, not developers, and facilitated the translation job for
> them..

I understand that simplification of the process is needed, but I'd hate
if more fine-grained control of translation priorites was sacrified in
the process. In that sense, I think the current GNOME model is
beneficial for translators in that it gives translators the possibility
to prioritize their work themselves. Not that it cannot be improved, it
can, but I'm not convinced that the KDE scheme is a total win for
translators.


Christian