Re: PO-based Documentation Translation

[Danilo Segan <dsegan gmx net>]

среда, 01. октобар 2003. 09:46:19 CEST — Ismael Olea написа:
> > It can't be as good as Emacs for editing text. I suspect the VI
> > persons here feel the same. And the ones using gedit.
> > And gtranslator. And KBabel. You get the picture. :-)
> 
> I think you are confusing a bit some detail. The reference tool here
> is not Emacs or our libre software favorite tools. You should study  
> how the real world works outside. This means you should focuse on  
> Trados, Wordfast, Transit, Deja Vu and so on, which are the real  
> tools than professional/commercial translator uses.

I think you're confusing some details too ;-)

First of all, I'm not a professional translator -- I'm doing it for fun  
of it, enjoyment, care about my language, and a bit of competition ;-)

I sort of "grew up" (in a computer sense) on free software, using it  
for my daily work. I did devote some time to learning how PO files  
work, how intltool works, and all the other stuff with which  
translations are currently done. So, all those tools you mention might  
be really good for me, but I'd probably have to invest a month of my  
time to get to know them and become productive with them.

Yes, I may be ready to do that if that would guarantee a major gain in  
productivity for me in the future. Still, I'd like some more convincing  
that it will be the case ;-)

OTOH, I don't think any of the translators that are helping me (in  
Serbian team) are willing to invest that much time. That means that  
I'll be the only one to benefit from it, and it doesn't mean much.

> Tim's team at Sun did this and reused the translation experience
> accumulated in their company for years (I think Sun was too the
> proposer of the gettext standard) for adopting XLIFF and developing  
> the new tool.
> 
> I'm not against Emacs or the rest, of course. But we need to focus in
> the exact target, and I think it's not about using or not PO for docs
> instead of which is the best way to solve the document translation
> problem, learning how the profession is doing this in the last 10
> years.

But the "profession" is also usually educated in translation process  
quite a bit more than the average volunteer translator, so it's  
understandable that they're doing it more "professionaly".

While I am reasonably fast with Emacs and po-mode (for instance, I can  
add a little hook to switch between input methods when I need it  
automatically), because I know a bit more about it than about other  
tools, I'd be really slow with other tools. Others, on a similar note,  
are fast with Gtranslator, Vim, and other tools.

So, what's the price to switch, and what's the price to entry?

> There are publicly available XLIFF->po stylesheets yet. And maybe Sun
> could release their filters any time in the future. This will do an
> easy interoperation framework for the present and not so bad use of  
> gettext for programs.

If we're to convert between XLIFF and PO, and edit PO files thus  
obtained, I don't see a point in using XLIFF at all -- that would lose  
all the advantages XLIFF might have over PO (unless you hand edit them  
later, but than what's the PO file for?).

Btw, if we're to switch to any new format, I'd really like it to  
support a bit more of stuff I care about: like translations depending  
on the gender, context markers etc.

Currently, from all the stuff that are programmaticaly possible, I  
think the context markers are the only thing missing in gettext PO  
format.

Just my two eurocents :-)

Cheers,
Danilo