Re: GNOME.org update

[Murray Cumming <murrayc murrayc com>]

On Thu, 2010-08-05 at 20:18 +0200, Vinicius Depizzol wrote:
> There is no way
> to know when translations needs to be updated when original text
> changes however.

This is the number one problem with most translated web sites. It's
foolish to dismiss it so readily. Problems can't be solved by just
wilfully ignoring them.

Until this is fixed, it would be a bad idea to use the translation
feature. It's guaranteed to lead to incomplete and out-of-date
translations, so people either
a) Get outdated information in their own language
b) Don't trust the information in their own language, so they always
look at the English version anyway.

I'm not claiming that Plone is any closer to solving this problem (I
don't know). I do know that Wordpress doesn't appear to have any
solution yet that we should depend on.

>  I honestly think that this is not a major problem
> (explanation follows).
> 
> If we will localize specific content such as banners (creating
> different images for each language -- the wordpress implementation
> already allows that), we will already have to use a mailing list
> (gnome-web-list?) or other communication way to create a bridge
> between who is creating these specific contents and who are the
> responsibles to translate it. This way, we will already have an easy
> way to communicate anything to website translators. We can just add a
> policy to send a notification when there's a modification in a
> translated page and our problem is solved. 

That's a terrible strategy that discards all the straightforward
practices that have allowed GNOME's translators to do such great work
translating software. I am dismayed.

I can't believe that I have to explain this, but "just use the mailing
list because you'd have to sometimes anyway"
a) Is freeform and unorganised, with no way to track progress.
b) Not every page has an image that needs translating.
b) Even if every page had an image that needed translating, that
wouldn't tell you if the text needed updating too.

-- 
murrayc murrayc com
www.murrayc.com
www.openismus.com