Re: Web interface for translation for GNOME

[Daniel Mustieles García <daniel mustieles gmail com>]

Hi Dimitris,

I don't think downloading a file and opening it (4 o 5 mouse clicks?) make the translation process hard for nobody.

As a translator, you may have 4 or 5 PO file to translate (doing a great work!) but as a coordinator, you may have those 4 or 5 PO files to review and commit multiplied for your active translators, plus your own PO files... sorry if I make my translators life harder, but I also have limited time, and need a tool that helps me to quickly review a translation and also lets me track the module's translation history.

Also, we have several roles: translator, proofreader and commiter. Hiding GNOME's infraestructure to plain translators may avoid them grow up and acquire knowledge about how translations workflow works. If I have a lot of translators but have no proofreaders nor commiters, workflow will be slower, and the number and the quality of the translations will fall down.

In the other hand, it has also benn commented above, Transifex doesn't work directly with the repo, so statistics are not reliable.

DL is good for me, and we can also improve it if we consider it's missing any feature, so +1 to DL.

Best regards

2013/8/29 Dimitris Glezos <dimitris glezos com>

On 28 August 2013 22:49, Marek Černocký <marek manet cz> wrote:

Fran Dieguez píše v Čt 29. 08. 2013 v 00:10 +0200:

> In small teams as our Galician team, we have a lot of problems to
> maintain translators just because people that could help us with
> translations doesn't have a lot of technical background. Even if our
> workflow is as simple as download a file, edit it and upload it.

This is a certain barrier for the selection translators. Who has problem
with such primitive operations, he will be difficult to produce high
quality translations. Good knowledge of language is base but some
technical knowledge is necessary too. Ubuntu has web interface for
translation and translation quality is poor in comparison with Gnome.

Based on my experience, usually the problem in community translations is that people have a limited time and energy to contribute. A fluid translation process is key. Translator will enter "translation mode" and just go on to work on as many entities as possible. Interrupting to do manual work (like downloading/uploading/open-in-poedit) just makes it "harder". 

The assumption behind this is, if a person has 1 hour to invest, we want him to be translating the 58 minutes of that hour. Additionally, interaction with other users through @messages for questions, suggestions, votes adds the social element. These will make him more productive, happier and the quality will go way higher.

This is why in Transifex, we want to reach a point where people open the editor and just go on, not even switching between projects and files. Discussions & reviews on translations happen in the editor itself etc. Smoother, more focused translation work = A Good Thing™.

-d

--
Dimitris Glezos
https://www.transifex.com/

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