Re: Hi GTP!

[Christian Rose <menthos gnome org>]

fre 2003-08-29 klockan 22.34 skrev Stephen Holmes:
> Hi GTP Members,
>  
> I'm the localisation manager for Novell's product development group
> and am based, with my team, in Dublin.  I'm hoping to learn how you
> guys get Gnome and Ximian software/documentation localised.  I hope I
> can share some our approaches with you aswell to the overall benefit
> of the community.

Hi, and most welcome!

It's certainly very nice to have the support of Novell in the
localization effort of GNOME and Ximian applications. I think this,
together with Sun's help, is a great and important step.

In the GTP, we work with translating software located in GNOME CVS. Our
localization is based on gettext and intltool, and much of the work is
done with the translation status pages at
http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gtp/status/ used as a continous
reference. Those pages are made by Carlos Perelló Marín
<carlos@gnome.org> and are automatically updated several times a day.
They don't just provide uptodate statistics but also msgmerged,
intltool-updated pot and po files, which translators can download and
work on.

Only some translators have CVS access, but we try to have at least one
translator in each language team have it. Thus, all translators can send
their finished work to someone in their language team that can help
commit their work.

The language teams are pretty much independant and deciding themselves
on both how they want to work organization-wise, and what tools they
use. As examples of this, some teams have a pretty strict control of
which translators maintain what translations, while other teams have
web-based systems that allows everyone with web access easy access and
possibility to contribute via the web. Also the tools vary. Some teams
are heavy users of translation memories and compendiums, while many
aren't, etc.

Our work is very much focused on translation of the applications
themselves -- only very few teams also contribute and maintain
documentation translations. I guess this is partly due to the UI being
prioritized, but also due to the translation of documentation, and the
maintaining of Docbook XML translations, being both rather difficult and
unfamiliar to translators used to the PO format. There have been several
efforts to create Docbook XML<->PO conversion tools, but we still need
to work out how to use those on a large scale in order to bring
translated documentation to many languages.

That's at least my attempt on doing a brief introduction of our current
work and status. This mailing list (gnome-i18n@gnome.org) acts as a
common, central, and official forum for GNOME translators. We also have
an IRC channel, #i18n, on irc.gnome.org, where we typically chat and
have more informal translation related discussions. For discussions
related to documentation translation, the gnome-doc-list@gnome.org
mailing list is typically also an useful forum to consult. There are
lots of people experienced with Docbook XML there.

Once again, welcome!


Christian