Re: translating beast (Re: Please translate beast and bse)

[Christian Rose <menthos gnome org>]

sön 2003-10-26 klockan 18.39 skrev Tim Janik:
> > > so for one, i'd like to remind every translator that beast has a po-bse/
> > > directory, but for another i'd like to raise the question whether there's
> > > anything package maintainers can do to remind translators of the existence
> > > of additional po-*/ dirs automatically.
> >
> > Also, another inherited problem with the multiple domains approach is
> > that the multiple po directories use different names. In close to 99% of
> > the cases a "cd po" is enough for the translator, but in the case of
> > gimp and beast they must also carefully examine what other po
> > directories are available and the special directories and names they use
> > in that particular module. We could of course extend the instructions on
> > http://developer.gnome.org/doc/tutorials/gnome-i18n/translator.html to
> > also cover the special cases of beast and gimp, but I'm not sure that
> > making those instructions much more complicated to make them work for 1%
> > more modules is worth the effort.
> 
> you must be kidding. adding one extra sentence about translators having
> to look for po-*/ directories also is definitely less effort than having
> to fix up the build process everytime a new translation is added to one
> of your "1%" projects.

No, I'm dead serious. The translator.html document doesn't exist for the
fun of writing such instructions. We desperately need *precise*
instructions so that also non-technical linguists can contribute
translations (and no, I don't count "look for po-* directories" as a
precise instruction), since we want as many translations as possible for
as many languages as possible.
But on the same time such instructions have to be short to be appealing.
Thus, they cannot cover every exotic corner case with weird non-standard
build setups and special directory names that are only relevant in 1% of
the cases.


> > So, to sum things up, I would propose that to facilitate this once and
> > for all you in beast either
> > 1) Use one translation domain only for the beast module, or
> > 2) Split beast up in several modules, each one with only one translation
> > domain.
> 
> beast uses different translation domains for the parts that are likely
> to become seperate packages in the future. it doesn't use seperate
> translation domains for the fun of it or to annoy translators.

Good.


> however, i will not prematurely split beast off into seperate modules
> just because this is the time you decided to translate beast.
>
> don't misunderstand me, i very much apprechiate the translation efforts
> dedicated to beast, but i won't let translations or any other implementation/
> standardisation/documentation/etc undertaking mess up long term project plans.
> 
> it's not that there'd exist an unfixable conflict between the way the beast
> module is setup and the ability to translate it. translations just need to
> be maintained in po-bse/ as well at the moment, and that works out fine for
> lots of the translations added to beast so far.

I don't doubt that. It's just that I interpreted your mail not only as a
heads-up notice to translators about the need to translate po-bse, but
also as a question for how this could get solved in the future. And I
tried to provide an answer to that. I'm sorry if it wasn't the answer
you had hoped for.


Christian