Re: Basque team new cvs account

[Christian Rose <menthos gnome org>]

ons 2005-03-23 klockan 12:17 +0100 skrev dooteo:
> Hi Christian and Mikel,

Hi Iñaki, good to hear from you.


> Mikel (aka Hey_neken) is a GNOME basque translator, and he is helping me
> to translate this desktop.
> 
> It's true that last 3 months I've didn't upload nothing to CVS, this is
> the reason: last months I'm working on a Debian based basque distro for
> Basque Goverment, so working with B.Gov's translators there are a lot of
> new packages translated (they finnished two weeks ago). I'm fixing those
> PO and help files before update CVS. I think next week will be able to
> upload most of them.
> 
> By the other hand, Basque translation team (Mikel and me, and other
> voluntaries) are working slowly. This is the procedure: all PO
> translated PO files have to be submited to me (to overview and fix the
> used terminology). After that are uploaded to CVS. I'd like to follow
> this way because on PO files are a lot of new terminology that all
> translator should be uses, but unfortunatly sometimes it doesn't
> happend. And Basque language needs to use/create those new terminology
> and translation style.
> 
> B.Gov's translator and me have several discussion about which new
> terminology adjust to original messages, which are better and which make
> confuse the user. B.G. translators have need more than 6 months to make
> they're job. More or less they're translated 400.000 words (including
> OOo's new messages and GNOME's help files).
[...]
>
> I think it's more effective to review translated files before submit to
> CVS, than have to be reviewing them after (once they are submited and
> propagate to all GNU/Linux distros). 

I certainly understand that you want a common and consistent Basque
terminology. However, it doesn't necessarily follow that everything must
be reviewed by one single person. Many other team coordinators also let
other members in their teams review the translations, so that there are
multiple reviewers, and let many members also have CVS accounts so that
they can commit translations that have been reviewed and approved.

Usually it is also a good idea to have a team web site where you can put
up a simple glossary of approved terminology, that Basque translators
can use when translating, as well as other contact information.

It also helps having a public team mailing list where discussions can
take place and translations can be reviewed. Since it's public,
translators and potential translators can follow the progress of the
review process, and sending a translation for review won't necessarily
feel like sending it to /dev/null.

So here's my suggestion:
1) Create a team website. Put up a English->Basque glossary with
accepted terminology. Also put up other contact information and other
information that you feel is needed (e.g. answers to questions like "How
do I join the team" etc.).
2) Create a team mailing list that can be used for reviews. Make sure
all translators in your team subscribes to this list.
Sites like Savannah or Sourceforge will let you do both 1) and 2) for
free, so it shouldn't be much of a problem.
3) Appoint one or more translators in your team to be "trusted
translators". This means that they can review and approve translations
themselves on the mailing list, and perhaps even commit them if you let
them have CVS accounts as well.

This should let the team operate more effective without the need for the
coordinator needing to review and approve everything. Everyone of us
sometimes get busy with other projects, but then it's our responsibility
to either leave the control over the previous project(s) to someone else
with more time for doing those things, or if it's just temporarily, make
sure the previous project(s) operate more efficiently by themselves,
even when we have little time monitoring them.

Everything above is just my personal recommendation -- however, what we
cannot tolerate from a GTP perspective is non-active (even though the
activity may currently be in another translation project) or unreachable
team coordinators. We want team coordinators to be active, coordinating,
and want them to be functional and reachable contact persons for the
teams.


> That's why I'd preffer to follow being GNOME Basque coordinator (and the
> task it suposses to me) to force GNOME Basque translated files to use a
> unified basque language.
> 
> Christian, if you think it's better to give grant to Mikel to access to
> CVS, do it. 

Since you've given an, in my opinion, reasonable explanation of the
situation, I think you can remain the Basque coordinator (unless you
want to give that position to someone else). However, I'd really like
you to do something about the situation, so that you aren't (or aren't
perceived as) the bottleneck in the translation team's process.

Since you're the coordinator, it's up to you to decide who should have
CVS accounts in your team (as long as they've made reasonable
contributions already, of course).
If you've decided that someone in your team should have a CVS account,
point them to http://developer.gnome.org/doc/policies/accounts/ for the
account request instructions.


> Mikel, if you want to take responsibility, it would be okey for me too.
> In that case we will be to organize ourself to review all submited
> files :)

It's up to you to decide...


Christian