re: difficulties with Gnome Translation

[Mohammed Elzubeir <elzubeir arabeyes org>]

The Gnome system seems to place the developers' individual applications'
independence very high. That is very well, and it needs not be
compromised. However, it is also under the assumption that translations
would be as spread out as the applications' po/'s. In other words, it
seems that translators are expected to be individually motivated by X,Y
persons who want to translate application Y. As opposed to Team 1
wanting to translate the entire Gnome environment and all the major
applications that come with it.

In Arabic's case, as noted by Isam in an earlier post, we maintain our
own CVS.. since the Arabeyes project deals with more than just
translation. We have our team of translators who work directly with our
CVS so we can locally centralize the process, and focus on what our
coordinators decide.

The problem begins with locating all the applications. Every application
has its own po/ directory. Which application, and where is it? Do we
have to search the entire cvs? What about applications that have version
numbers in the module name? How do we work with that, as it changes?

When one considers that, this current setup allows better freedom to the
translators to decide on what needs special attention (xscreensaver
example cited).. that is the job of the translation team coordinator.
One can easily ask the team to ignore certain parts and concentrate on
others via the team's mailing-list(s), and translation status page (note
http://www.arabeyes.org/project.php?proj=gnome-i18n). 

As far as dealing w/ Gnome, I think centralized documentation on what is
involved (from a-z) would be very nice. There are _many_ tools that are
lying around which could be used to remedy this, but most of us either
don't know about them, or how to use them. 

In other words, think in terms of automating the transition, from our
CVS to the Gnome CVS.. if you were to script this entire process, what
would you need to do? All the steps.. from locating the pot's to
downloading them, to committing it to our cvs, to modifying it, to
sending it back... etc. Once we know all that, we can work
around it, script it.. and offer it for other teams who may find it
useful. I know that most translation teams may not of have gone all the
way as Arabeyes has, in terms of cvs, mailing-lists, etc. But, it
certainly makes the process easier, and much faster. 

Thanks
-- 
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| Mohammed Elzubeir    | Visit us at:                 |
|                      |  http://www.arabeyes.org/    |
| Arabeyes Project     | Homepage:                    |
| Unix the 'right' way |  http://fakkir.net/~elzubeir/|
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