Re: Complaint of the Slovak coordinator

[Marcel Telka <marcel telka sk>]

Hi,

Some things I explained in my previous post, so I'll not duplicate my
response here. If I overlooked something (and thus deleted it), please
let me know, I'll add my comments.

On Thu, May 13, 2010 at 01:08:52AM +0200, Jiri Eischmann wrote:
> JOINING THE TEAM: In the Czech team, you just need to sign up on
> Vertimus and make a modul reservation. It's also recommended to send an

We require following for new members:
- join gnome-sk-list
- register to bugzilla
- register to Vertimus and join the team
- sent an email (with a template available)

Before a translator can start to translate he should sent an email with
the request. In less than one working day I either assign the module to
the translator (most cases) or explain why it is not possible, or why it
is not good idea.

> e-mail to the mailing list to check if someone's accidentally
> translating it. In the Slovak team, you have to send a formal e-mail in
> which you have to write your real name (tell open source people about
> privacy...). You have to ask for moduls and many of them are not
> available even though no one has touched them for months.
> CHECKING TRANSLATIONS: In the Czech team, a translator uploads a
> translation and a corrector checks it. If he finds any incorrect
> translations he corrects them and if he thinks there are serious he

If you have skilled translators and reviewers you can do that. This is
my dream for our team too.

> provides feedback to the translator. But he doesn't return the
> translation! The time between uploading and submitting is about a few
> days, 2 weeks max. In the Slovak team, if a corrector finds a problem he

This is not general rule. If reviewer finds easily fixable problem (like
typo or obviously invalid translation where there is clear way how to
transllate it) he will fix it by himself. If the problem is not easily
fixable, or the proper translation is unclear, the message is marked
properly (with comments) and left for translator to do his job.

This way works all reviewers in our team, not only me. To be exact I do
not review newly uploaded translations for some time. This is job for
our 4 reviewers.

> returns a translation to a translator. This happens again and again
> until it's perfectly correct or more likely the translator gets

Again, "perfectly correct" is not true.

> frustrated and gives up. No surprise that there are many translations
> waiting to be submitted for months and I think some of them will never
> be submitted.

If a translation is never submitted then it cannot reach the git. I do
not understand this, sorry :-(.

OTOH, we have examples where translators complained about too loong time
between first submission and the final commit. When I sat down with the
translator and started to anlyze the Vertimus data we found that most of
the time was spent by either translating the module or reviewing it.
Overhead generated by my final check was about 15 %. After that the
translator admitted, that his copmlains were about feeling, not real
data.

> ACCEPTING TRANSLATIONS: The Czech team accepts translations even from
> translators who, as I say, just go along. All teams I've been involved
> in do it. That's the spirit of FLOSS. I need to translate something and

There are several GNOME translation teams who work with similar rules
about the assignments. I do not know details, but they also assigns
modules to their translators.

> if it's done why not to provide it to someone else (to upstream in this
> case). It does not work like this in the Slovak team. If someone
> provided a translation he was told that he would become a long-term
> translator or there was no interest... a very picky policy from the team
> which has lost almost 40 % of translations in 10 last releases... and
> result for users? no translations. There was a case when one guy
> uploaded 60 % of Empathy translations. It's several hundred strings,

This guy and the emapthy is not example of such random translator. The
translation was uploaded by regular member of our team. I think this
translation was the first contribution of this translator.

> decent work. But he was told not to upload it until he gets over 90 %.
> What happened? That guy got apparently frustrated and looks like the

That guy immediately reserved the module for translation. Yes. It is
true that he submitted the complete translation after many months, but
IIRC he did not copmlained when I asked for more complete translation.

There is no other intervention to this translation from me. The
translation is still between the translator and reviewer (Peter).

http://l10n.gnome.org/vertimus/empathy/master/po/sk

> uploaded 60 % will never be submitted. The result for users? no
> translations.

We really do not want to commit everything around. Sorry.

> 
> Because people kept asking why Slovak translations were in such a bad
> condition I wrote an article about it on LinuxEXPRES.cz [1]. That
> article got a huge response. And it's interesting readings, especially
> commentaries by users, former and current team members etc. (the article
> is in Czech and the commentaries either in Czech or Slovak). I received
> e-mails from people and some of them suggested that another Slovak
> localization should be made. If those ideas are brought up it's serious.

Yes. There are some people who disagree and complain and go around.
There are other people who really want to understand and want to help.

> 
> I'm not a member of the Slovak team, so I can't take part in resolving
> this problem. But please take it seriously. From my point of view, there
> is no other real solution than changing the coordinator. I have followed
> the development in the team for quite a long time. There have been

Thank you for following the development in our team. But I do not
understand how you follow it when you are not a member of our team and
you are not a member of the gnome-sk-list mailing list. You never
contacted me, you never asked me, IIRC. Thank you.

> several complaints of the coordinator. He always promised that he would
> do the job better or make changes, but the result is self-explanatory:
> almost -40 % and steady fall.

-- 
+-------------------------------------------+
| Marcel Telka   e-mail:   marcel telka sk  |
|                homepage: http://telka.sk/ |
|                jabber:   marcel jabber sk |
+-------------------------------------------+