GPL: disclaimer and format

[Clytie Siddall <clytie riverland net au>]

Hi everyone :)

It's taking me a while to catch up with things, so sorry if I come an  
go a bit. That will probably continue.

I recently translated the GNU General Public Licence. It had not  
previously been translated into our language. My translation has been  
reviewed by another member of our overall team, and has been sent to  
GNU as an unofficial translation following their guidelines, also  
posted in vi.Wikisource. [1

Having translated the GPL, I used my translation to complete the  
gpl.po which is part of the Debian Installer User Manual [2], and the  
gpl.po which is in gnome-desktop/desktop-docs.

I have two concerns with the GNOME version:

1. It does not include the disclaimer which GNU insist _must_ be  
included. [3] I imagine there are heavy legal consequences for not  
including it, and in any case, my translation is definitely an  
unofficial one: I am not a professional translator with insurance to  
cover legal issues, and I have not consulted lawyers about the  
content. How do I add the required disclaimer to the gpl.po file? The  
Debian PO file does include the disclaimer, but the GNOME file  
doesn't have it at all.

2. The text in the GNOME gpl.po does not always follow the order of  
the original GPL (or of the Debian gpl.po). This would be confusing  
if one were translating the GNOME version first. I strongly recommend  
the paragraphs and headers be placed in order in this file. The  
original text does have an ordered and logical message, so disrupting  
the order of paragraphs or sentences also disrupts the meaning, and  
makes it more difficult for the translator to understand.

I do remember point 1 being raised here before. I think it's  
important that we resolve it ASAP.

from Clytie (vi-VN, Vietnamese free-software translation team / nhóm  
Việt hóa phần mềm tự do)
http://groups-beta.google.com/group/vi-VN

[1] http://vi.wikisource.org/wiki/GPL
[2] http://people.debian.org/~seppy/d-i/manual/POT/
[3] http://www.gnu.org/licenses/translations.html