PLEASE READ : Sun Gnome2.0 UI translation

[Damien Donlon <Damien Donlon Sun COM>]

Hi All,
This email is addressed specifically to the translation
team coordinators for Gnome but feedback from anyone
else involved in Gnome translation is also very welcome.

With the kind help of Christian Meyer, Christian Rose, Keld
Simonsen & Abel Cheung we have put together a proposal for
coordinating the forthcoming Sun translation work for Gnome
2.0 UI messages. You will find it attached. Please provide
your feedback on it as soon as possible so that we can 
make any necessary changes to the process and get started with 
this work.

Thank you!

Regards,
Damien

______________________
Damien Donlon
damien.donlon@sun.com
00 353 1 8199225
x19225

 Proposal for forthcoming Sun Gnome 2.0 UI Translation Work
 __________________________________________________________


This document outlines a plan for coordinating translation work
to be done by Sun for Gnome 2.0 UI messages. It is needed to :

 - avoid duplication of effort between Sun and community translators
 - define a community review process for Sun translations

The current language list for which Sun is funding translations
and their corresponding community team coordinators is as follows :

 de         Matthias Warkus/Christian Meyer 
 es         Manuel de Vega Barreiro/Germán Poo Caamaño 
 it         Christopher Gabriel 
 fr         Christophe Merlet 
 pt_BR      Jorge Godoy 
 ja         Yukihiro Nakai 
 zh_CN      Wang Jian 
 zh_TW      Abel Cheung 
 ko         Noh Woo Kyong 
 pl         Zbigniew Chyla
 sv         Christian Rose 


We wish to do rolling translations on 4 groups of modules and need
to coordinate with the community translation teams to ensure there
is no duplication of translation work.

The 4 groups of modules are :


Group 1			Group 2			Group 3
_________________________________________________________

gdict			sawfish			libgnomecanvas
gedit			yelp			libgnomeui
ggv			bonobo			glib
ghex			gnome-admin		at-spi
glade			gnome-print		bonobo-activation
gnome-applets		gtk+			eel
gnome-control-center	gconf			eog
gnome-core		gnome-vfs		gnome-desktop
gnome-media		gtkhtml			gnome-games
gnome-utils		gnome-i18n		gnome-mime-data
gperfmeter		libbonobo		gnome-panel
nautilus		libgnome		gnome-session



Group 4
______________________

gtkhtml2
libbonoboui
libglade
libgnomeprint
libgnomeprintui
libwnck
libzvt
metacity
metatheme
profterm


Some of these modules may currently have no translatable 
strings as the listing is based on a search for po directories
in the CVS tree used to build Gnome on Solaris. Also, some of 
these modules may have complete translations for certain languages 
already. 

We prefer to use the rolling translation model on groups of modules 
because doing translations for individual languages  on a individual module 
basis would be difficult to coordinate over 11 languages and make a 
generic process for doing translation review and putbacks into the 
CVS tree difficult. 

We would like the process to work as follows :


We will forward a translation schedule in due course listing dates
when we will take each group of modules.

On these dates , coordinators would then suspend their translation
work on the modules contained in the group. We will then do analysis of the 
translatable content and then come back to the coordinators with a 
return date for the translated files on a per language basis within 
1/2 days. 

Typically turnaround time is about 1500-2000 words per language per 
day but with QA andd proofreading generally we are talking about 5 days
for 5000 words or thereabouts. However, this may be shorter or longer
dependent on the completeness of existing translations for the
language.

We wish to ensure a complete community review of our 
translations prior to them being put back into CVS and suggest
the following process :

[1] Once Sun translation work has bee completed we will hand-off
the translated files to the community translation teams for review.
We will also supply contact names for each language to whom 
community translation team coordinators can send their review
comments. Team coordinators ONLY contact this person please!


[2] If a situation arises where things are not going well on either 
side for whatever reason then escalate it to Ashling Donagh 
(ashling.donagh@sun.com), otherwise no need to cc her on emails
about the review.

[3] When you review the translations you need to send commments NOT
changed files. Reason : Because our translators have been translating for 
Sun for years and they know our style guidelines and use our glossaries
we have to give their translations precedence (no offense!) for Gnome on
Solaris. But we do want to get community translator input on those 
translations because of their familiarity with Gnome. Thus we ensure 
best quality for all.

Providing comments as opposed to changed files ensures that community
translation teams are free to implement whatever changes they think 
appropriate for the community release  once we commit them.

[4] Our translators will implement the community translation team
comments. If they do not implement a comment they will flag it
and return it to the language team coordinator as "not implemented".
If they make any additional changes to those messages already
translated by the community they will note it and flag as
"changed translated message".

[5] If, after 7 days there is no feedback on the files sent
to community teams for review then we will assume they are ok
and place them back into community CVS. If a community language
team is unable to provide feedback within 7 days but wish to do
so, or if specific teams have specific 'commit' policy for putting 
back files then let us know. Otherwise, we shall just commit the files!
  

[6] One important note - everything we hand back will be in UTF-8
encoding and the charmap fielf in the 1st msgid of the .po files
will be changed accordingly.


When all translations have been completed for all languages on a 
specific group of modules then we will move on to the next group.

In summary the process would be :

1. Sun inform community translation teams that they are taking 
   a group of modules on a specific date.
2. Community translation teams freeze working on those modules
   at that date.
3. Sun provides community with expected file return date.
4. Upon translation Sun send files to community for review.
5. Community teams provide review comments within 7 days.
6. Sun implement review comments for Solaris Gnome release 
   and flag any comments not implemented to community team
   coordinators.
7. Sun returns files to community CVS.
8. Move on to next group of modules. 


Please send your comments/feedback to damien.donlon@sun.com cc'ing 
ashling.donagh@ireland.sun.com