Re: PO-based Documentation Translation

[Ismael Olea <ismael olea org>]

El mié, 01-10-2003 a las 14:48, Keld Jørn Simonsen escribió:


> > Our users deserves the best quality available and there are some things
> > to learn out there.
> 
> Probably gettext/.po system is some of the best software around for
> translations. 

Or probably not. Please follow the links at
http://bugzilla.hispalinux.es/44, most of them are in English.

> At least it is some of the most used and most productive.
> If we compare Linux to other big translation projects, like MS Windows,
> Linux has more applications translated than Windows (eg most systems
> administration software is translated in Linux, while not in Windows -
> Windows server 2003 is only in English, the Windows XP Plus package is
> only in English) and Linux is translated to more languages than Windows.

I think this statistic is not so accurate. Please meet some professional
translator on your area (or your language by Internet) and ask them. Is
as easy as this.

> I hesitate to compare with Sun products as I know little about them
> these days, but I would imagine that Sun products are much less
> translated than MS windows. Also Sun products are less present in the
> "real world" than Windows and Linux, more than 90 % of all Unix systems
> in the world are Linux systems, and on my fairly well used site, there
> are more than a hundred times more Linux users than SunOS users.
> So as far as I can see, Linux is "real world", whils Sun is something in
> a niche.

So, if Linux has more market place, the rest of the world is
definitively wrong. That's the power of democracy!!

Don't confuse our partial successes with the overall problem: how the
translation work should be done. Is mainly a question of methodology. In
the same way we accept to learn methodology to participate in Gnome as
programmers, the same happens for translation.

And this is not to say «hey you, gnome translators, all your work done
is shit». No please. It is «learn how to be more powerful and faster».

> The .po file format and tools associated with it thus have a proven
> track record in the marketplace as one of the best technologies for
> getting the translation job done for big translation projects.

Really? I've been in a translation congress last year and nobody knows
about it. Maybe me and the other 100 attendees were wrong. And maybe
Sun, Novell or Microsoft too, since AFAIK they don't use the good-old
gettext's po.


> let's build on that succes, make it better by all means, but I hesitate
> to switch to something that has not stood the test of time, on big
> translation projects, like the .po file format.

The test of the time? You speak about the technologies you know. Maybe
you should learn about other ones that are being used for years too. For
example, I think you could be interested in how de European Commission
Translation Service works, which is said to be the bigger in the world.

http://europa.eu.int/comm/dgs/translation/bookshelf/2002_tools_and_workflow_es.pdf


> .po files rulez!

Sounds like the Spanish proverb: «choose something bad but well known
that something better but unknown».



> > I suggest to study how Trados and others resolve these and other
> > problems. Maybe they are solved.
> 
> Trados is commercial software. We cannot build anything in gnome on
> commercial software.

I'll say again: «I suggest to study how Trados and others resolve these
and other problems. Maybe they are solved.». There is nothing wrong with
what you said :)

> But of cause we can get ideas from it (as long as they are not coverede
> by software patents).

At least EU is a patent free for now.

-- 
        A.Ismael Olea González

        mailto:ismael@olea.org  http://www.olea.org
        http://aduaneros.olea.org, la ONG sin futuro.

        El mundo debe empezar a tener miedo a un planeta OLEA