Re: GNOME Localization and Usability

[Danilo Segan <danilo gnome org>]

Francesco Marletta <francesco.marletta@tiscali.it> writes:
>>
>> > As good as it works, most of the newbie translators today would
>> > probably have problems with it: web is what they're used to (how
>> > many times did you hear people refer to the web as to the
>> > "Internet"?), and that's what any interface created for ease of use
>> > should use.
>> 
>> I agree, and after reading the other posts, would suggest to make a
>> complete web interface for translators. A website where every active
>> member of GTP gets an account, team leaders can assign modules to team
>> members (even better: first come, first get), and team members can
>> fetch and put their translations (which are completely checked and
>> handled by the application). Statistics could be personalized at this
>> site. I think such a system would be ideal: it would make translation
>> less error-prone, and it would lower the threshold for new
>> translators. And it shouldn't be hard to make such a system (I
>> volunteer to help).
>
> I think that this proposal is very good.
>
> It will help people do their work quickly.
>
> Another small enanchement could be the ability for the translators to
> edit the po file using the web application.
>
> I volunteer to help too.

Ok, I think this has enough merit.  The current system at Prevod.org
(Serbian Gnome translation project) is a (little) bit similar to
mentioned stuff: it allows translators to register, take over
translation that is not in progress, and submit their correction or
complete translation.  Message about submission is forwarded to
Serbian mailing list, so anyone can comment on it.  As soon as I find,
time, I upload it (by hand) into CVS. It's not a problem to commit it
automatically, as many have already shown, but I didn't want to do
that, because translators tend to work on obsolete translations more
often than not.

The proposal here is to extend this paradigm to support automatic
commit into CVS.  That's not too hard to do, but there are some
caveats. 

First of all, the software I wrote for Prevod.org is utter crap in
PHP, written when I didn't have the slightest idea how does the GTP
work.  I didn't even have a CVS account at that time, and didn't
submit a single translation (I had a couple in my queue, which
Christian Rose experienced once I sent him a couple of dozens
translations at once ;).

It did serve it's purpose (I had no less than 16 different
contributors to the translation :), but now I have more experience
that could help me create a better system, and more suited to what
would need people contributing translations.

In the next months or so, I plan to start rewriting such a system in
Python, for ease of maintanenace, and because of the wide base of
already existing code.  The step of commiting translation to CVS is
only an implementation detail that's not really relevant once you've
got the system, but it introduces some concerns (like, coordinator
*must* approve the translation before it hits the CVS -- still, one
approval is better than typing 100 keys :).

What I currently lack is time (just like everybody else :).  There's
already a lot of code that can be reused (Ka$@#^&, or whatever its
name is you crazy Welsh ;), Translation Project code (also in Python,
right?), etc. Administration and coordination job is sufficiently
well done on Prevod.org already, and some ideas (and practical
experience) can be reused from there.

Now, as soon as I start getting something real together, I'll let
anyone who expresses interest know about it. If it turns out to be a
GTP-wide project, I'd put it into Gnome CVS to let everyone
contribute.

Cheers,
Danilo (who's been away a couple of days because of migration to a
new computer :)