Re: difficulties with Gnome Translation

[Mohammed Elzubeir <elzubeir arabeyes org>]

On Sat, Apr 27, 2002 at 11:29:41PM +0200, Christian Rose wrote:
> 
> I don't see any conflict in this. For those who want to translate "all
> of Gnome" and may not be much interested in the individual applications
> by their own but rather of the environment as a whole, the status pages
> is the resource to use. They define what should be translated if Gnome
> is to be translated(*).
> 
> (*) Currently this isn't the case because for example the unstable
> status pages don't just list the core GNOME 2.0 modules but also a lot
> of non-core and non-gnome modules, but that's just a bug. I think we
> need a seperate stable/extra and unstable/extra report. I'd really
> appreciate Carlos' opinions on this.

Okay, so we know where to go for the definitive answer, but it is
currently 'buggy' ;) I will simply keep this in mind as we try to
restructure ourselves to adapt to Gnome's setup.

> Ok. I think that each translation policy has its benefits and drwabacks,
> and the policy of doing and maintaining work locally instead of upstream
> of course also applies to this. This is the same problem that every
> distributor has when branching software and adding patches and
> maintaining local copies. Sometimes it's just the price that has to be
> paid that merging with upstream becomes more difficult.

You are right. We believe that the benefits outweigh the setbacks. For
example, once we settle this issue and have this process automated on
our side to sync properly w/ Gnome.. the rest is all a cruise ;) In
other words, the overhead is big, but the payoff is worth it, IMHO.

> Which application -> look at the name in the html status report, or
> parse gnome-i18n/status/translation-status.xml.

Noted. Thanks.. that seems to be the #1 file to look at ;)

> You mean like "anjuta2"? This use of version numbers in module names is

Yes ;) Of course I don't know what the life-cycle on these names are
like, but it scares me to think of it ;) But from what you are saying,
they are there.. but shouldn't of have been.. or are exceptions.. and
should be treated as if they are an individual package all on its own.
Fair enough.

> That's certainly a general problem. The reason there isn't any
> documentation or bad documentation about the tools is that noone has
> time to improve it or has offered to improve it. So any help to make
> this better is welcome! For example, kenneth has asked many times for
> help with providing docs for intltool, and there are also many other
> areas where docs are needed to get translators started. If you have the
> possibility to help, please don't hesitate to do so! :)

We first need to understand it, to be able to help in documenting it ;)
I think I chatted with kenneth on irc some time back about this.

> As I see it, the size of the Arabic translation team is exceptional (I

And our current setup is what allows for the number of volunteers to
expand without having to worry about it. It is one of the main reasons
why we have our own CVS, etc. So translators would only have to
be accustomed to one setup, and work on various translation projects (be
it Gnome or otherwise).. and we have to worry about making sure the
integration between our setup and other projects' (e.g. Gnome) work ;)

> would suspect most other translation teams to be less than 10 persons,
> perhaps most of them even less than five persons, where the numbers of
> those who are actively and regularily contributing being even less), and
> I think it's also not common that they in addition to Gnome also handle
> the translation of most other free software projects. :)

You are right. For most languages, that is not a problem. For Arabic,
such translation has not been there before. Arabeyes tries to centralize
all Arabization efforts under one umbrella to speed it up (as you may
know, Arabic support has been seriously lacking until just recently)..
for example, not until gnome2 w/ Pango support did Arabic become
possible.

> That being said, I think it would be great if we could ease the process
> for those (that?) translation team that uses its own cvs like the
> Arabeyes team, if we can avoid having to change the process for all
> other translation teams. But I have no idea on how to do that, or if
> it's at all possible.

Oh certainly. I'm not advocating accommodating our setup only. We are
simply trying to understand the differences so we can make it automated.
And if there are good general changes, then we would recommend them ;)

But from this, I conclude that the first step is to look at
gnome-i18n/status/translation-status.xml and work from there. I am sure
that once we get this automated, other teams would want to follow our
model. It has been successful in previous translations, and I think it
can/will be successful w/ Gnome.

<personal bias>
after all, I am an avid gnome user myself and would like to see Arabic
in Gnome soon ;) 
</personal bias>

later
-- 
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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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