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

[Simos Xenitellis <simos lists googlemail com>]

On Sun, Oct 31, 2010 at 11:25 PM, jbowtie amathaine com <jbowtie amathaine com> wrote:

Speaking as a small team coordinator struggling to recruit people and
get them active, I have to agree this is a big issue - I don't know
how we'll ever make it to 20%, much less 80%. The problem is that most
people take one look at a file filled with error messages and schema
strings and I never hear from them again. I *only* get contributions
when I can tell them *exactly* which strings in the file correspond to
buttons/menus/labels.  Guess what?  I can't do that on my own for most
modules, which is why over the last few years our stats have actually
dropped from nearly 5% to <1%. In fact, I don't think I've landed a
single contribution since the switch to Git (though there have a been
a few drive-by translations via Ubuntu).

I don't know how many of the other languages languishing at the bottom
of the list are facing the same issue, but I'll bet it's a fair
number. I can swear to you that if I could get a fair number of the UI
elements translated (say, 20% by D-L stats), we would see a big surge
in contributions and maybe even sponsorship from the Language
Commission.

I mean, gtk+ is my favorite example here; the first string is "Error
parsing option --gdk-debug", while the stock labels (which is frankly
all I care about given our general lack of coverage) are down
somewhere around 450 strings in. 99% of my users are never going to
see any of the command-line stuff in the gtk+ module, but 100% of them
are going to encounter the stock labels. Why should I *have* to
explain all this stuff to every potential recruit? It's hard enough
just finding people who are willing to contribute in the first place;
then the first thing they see is the sea of technical messages and
their motivation just evaporates.

Thanks for describing this eloquently.

Of course, fully translated GNOME means all files translated, but it's nice to have this intermediate goal where you translate the most visible strings. 

My suggestion would be to have a parallel page (let's call it "Compact"), similar to your
http://l10n.gnome.org/languages/el/gnome-3-0/ui/

which would show the reduced PO files, after the filtering to remove schema/error/etc strings.
This filtering would take place only in damned-lies.

What damned-lies would do for each PO file that appears in the Compact page of statistics,

1. For each message in the PO file
2.    If the message is already translated or fuzzy, add it anyway to the Compact PO file
3.    If the message is not important (schema, CLI error message, etc), ignore it
4.    Add the remaining messages to the Compact PO file

Due to this, it would be fine to commit these reduced PO files, and you would not lose data.

What would the translators do,
1. If you are a new team (few translations), do translations on the Compact page at damned-lies, until you complete them all fully. Once you achieved the first translation goal, go to the regular page for your language to continue the full translations, schemas, error messages and so on.

2. If you are an experienced team with good level of translations, ignore the Compact page and translate as you always have been doing.

I would call this special page, 
http://l10n.gnome.org/languages/el/gnome-3-0/compactui/


(note the 'compactui').

There is the issue of having both 
http://l10n.gnome.org/languages/el/gnome-3-0/ui/
and
http://l10n.gnome.org/languages/el/gnome-3-0/compactui/
at the same time.
It would be ideal if the team coordinator for each language could set in the Preferences for their language to show either one or the other page for the UI translations. That is, you go to http://l10n.gnome.org/teams/LL for your language and it shows by default either the full UI translations URL or the Compact URL.

Simos