Re: Translating schema files (was: Re: Survey results (yay!))

[Khaled Hosny <khaledhosny eglug org>]

On Sat, Oct 30, 2010 at 11:30:51AM +0200, Johannes Schmid wrote:
> Hi!
> 
> > So, just stripping out the gconf/dconf schemas we are getting 17% less
> > words to translate!
> 
> > If we do the same with the errors (much harder to do the analysis
> > though) we could nearly shrink the number of words to translate, at
> > least to 30% (so ~60k words less).
> > 
> > On the other side, or to further bold this argument, with the new
> > moduleset proposal made by the release team, more and more applications
> > are going to pop up, so more strings/words to translate...
> > 
> > Now that we have the numbers ... what do you think? Would it make sense
> > to propose the release team to ask to create different po files
> > depending on the string type (schema, error and general)?
> 
> Well, I disagree here: A complete translation of a desktop means to me
> that all user-visible strings are translated. And that includes error
> messages on the terminal as well as dconf schemas (that are shown at
> least in dconf-editor and possibly in the to be developed GNOME
> configuration tool).

Since Gnome does not ship with a terminal able to display Arabic
properly, translating messages on the terminal for Arabic (or any other
RTL script) is not just a waste of time but also renders these messages
useless because no one can now read them. Schema strings are visible in
the {g,d}conf-editor, right, but how many users use that tool, actually
how many distributions ship it by default? Many translation teams are
underpowered, so helping us to prioritise our work means we can have
better user experience for less work, 100% translated desktop is just
slightly better than 83% translated one when the difference is rarely
seen strings, so why waste time one this 17% when we can translate the
user manual or some other documentation for example.

> The gtk+ properties are a bit different here because they are definitly
> only shown to developers and not to users (except in glade, but there
> user = developer).
> 
> Futher, I think extra po files complicate the build system quite a bit
> and I really don't want to do that for my modules (anjuta has about 20
> schema files though they aren't translated at all atm).

If complicating an automated process is the tradeoff to helping bringing
localised Gnome to more wider audience, then I find that very
acceptable.

> I feel this is the pseudo discussion for teams reaching yx % while it is
> far more important that it is convenient for the user. You can have 95%
> without translating nautilus and the user would still feel that half of
> the translation is missing. These numbers are just for our egos...

The discussion is about helping teams to identify low priority strings
and not waste time on them when more user visible stuff is still
untranslated, so I don't see how pseudo is that.

> And 6% of the strings isn't really much. The difference between
> translating a word and a string is mostly marginal if the strings isn't
> five sentences long.

I'd not underestimate ~35k words, that is nearly two months of dedicated
work for an experienced translator.

Regards,
 Khaled

-- 
 Khaled Hosny
 Arabic localiser and member of Arabeyes.org team
 Free font developer