Project translation policy (was Re: gnomeradio translations)

[Christian Rose <menthos menthos com>]

sön 2002-02-03 klockan 22.50 skrev Joergen Scheibengruber:
> I received some new translations for gnomeradio, others have been
> updated. Could someone add them to cvs?
> (gnome-i18n/extra-po/gnomeradio). I include the Changelog I made, too.

I think it would improve the situation if you decided upon a policy for
how translations show be handled and sent. With a good policy, it can
remove much of the maintainership burden of handling translations and
sorting out problems with several translations of the same language and
so on.

MrProject is an external software project not present in GNOME cvs, but
I convinced the developers to use a translation policy like this,
directing all translation volunteers to the GNOME Translation Project
(GTP) and their respective language teams:

http://mrproject.codefactory.se/translate.php
(I wrote that, you are free to copy it)

A strategy like that has several advantages:

* Developers and translators alike don't need to worry about which
translation is the newest, the directory in GNOME cvs is the master
source for the applications' translations

* The danger of accidental duplicate work is minimized, since
translation volunteers are encouraged to communicate directly with their
respective GTP language team. The language team hopefully knows if
someone is already working on a translation of that application

* Developers don't need to worry about conflicting translations and
which ones are better, these are conflicts that the language team is
best suited to resolve, since they hopefully have deep knowledge about
the language in question

* The language team can help the translation volunteer, either with
technical questions regarding gettext tools or with linguistic questions

* The translator can have the finished translation reviewed by the
language team. This, and the fact that a common glossary can be used,
improves consistency

* At least someone in the language team can commit the finished
translation to GNOME cvs


What does the developer have to do, when a policy like that is used?

* Direct all volunteering translators to a web page like the above, ask
them to read the instructions, and ask them to contact their GTP
language team.
* Send a new pot file to the GTP (gnome-i18n@gnome.org) at least a few
days in advance of a release, and mention that you will do a new release
and when you expect it to be made (so that translators know the time
frame, and can put the pot and updated translations into GNOME CVS).
* Check out all translations from GNOME CVS immediately before the
release and incorporate them into the software.

Everything else is handled by the GTP and the language teams.


> BTW: Translations are still welcome. If anyone feels like it, you find
> the tarball with the .pot file and information on which languages have
> already been translated on http://mfcn.ilo.de/gnomeradio. Please don't
> just put new translations in cvs, but send me a version, too, because i
> don't check cvs very often.

You only need to do it before a release...

What do you think about this suggestion?


Christian