For translators: Midnight Commander on Transifex.net

[Dimitris Glezos <glezos indifex com>]

Hi all.

I am coming late to the discussion, and sorry for the non-threaded reply headers
(if anyone knows how to properly reply to a thread started before one subscribed
to mailman, I'm all ears!)

I'll try to answer some questions, hopefully help in the decision making process
by sheding some more light in what Transifex is and what it isn't. Disclaimer:
I'm the lead developer. =)

Slava Zanko <slavazanko gmail com> wrote:
> 17.02.2010 18:57, Morten Bo Johansen wrote:
>>
>> Now mc registered on Transifex: http://www.transifex.net/projects/p/mc/
>> ...
>> Nope. At Transifex you free for select your expirience level yourself:
>> http://www.midnight-commander.org/nopaste/4Morten/download-upload-po.png
>
> Right, you can use your preferred editor, but where is the advantage of
> Transifix, other that you can submit a file with the click of a button as
> opposed to sending it to the Translation Robot by mail?

Slava, I hear some of your concerns. It's true that the Translation Project has
served us very well in being an upstream projects to host translations. With
Transifex we have tried to follow this good example, and instead of just
providing a tool to 'translate stuff', we have deployed Transifex.net as an
common hub for upstream translations.

Additionally, since Transifex connects directly to the repository system, you
can even use it in parallel to other tools, so it doesn't get in your way.
Having a choice is a good thing right? I mean, some people prefer a web editor,
some others prefer an offline one. And some people hate both Transifex as well
as the Translation Project. =)

I think both developers and translators can enjoy the service. Developers now
have the choice to let translators do their job without worrying at all about
merging or access rights, and translators have a (hopefully) intuitive and
featureful toolchain.

Currently Tx is being used by around 2000 translators for projects like Fedora,
Moblin (Intel/Linux Foundation), Maemo (Nokia), XFCE, LXDE, Mercurial, Django,
Pulseaudio and Packagekit. A few more large upstream projects are currently
evaluating it as well.

> Right, you can use your preferred editor, but where is the advantage of
> Transifix, other that you can submit a file with the click of a button as
> opposed to sending it to the Translation Robot by mail?

Some of the features that probably are worth mentioning include the following.
I might not be the best person to judge, so I'll only be quoting some of the
features that other projects have found exciting compared to other translation
projects or software.

 - Actively developed and maintained by a team of 5 hackers.

 - Register any project, hosted anywhere, with a few clicks.

 - Per-project translation teams: MC can have its own teams with coordinators.

 - Translation reviews: Upload your file for your team to review and accept. Or,
  accept translations from newcomers and review them before the actual
  submission.

 - Submission straight to the versioning system, together with msgmerges,
  syntax checking.

 - A Web editor for quick fixes which includes machine translation suggestions.

 - Multiple components per project (eg. UI, Docs, 0.7.x), multiple PO files per
  component (eg. screen.po, command-line.po, etc).

 - Support for notification on changes in registered projects, on changes in
  particular branches, or even *per files*. When your file goes to 99%, you
  get an email, you open up the web editor and with a few clicks you get it
  straight away back to 100%.

For a full list of the current features, you can refer to the following pages:

http://docs.transifex.org/releases/0.6.html
http://docs.transifex.org/releases/0.7.html
http://docs.transifex.org/releases/0.8.html

I'd love if you tried it out and give us some feedback on what you'd like to
see improved!

> Translations are usually peer reviewed on the mailing list
> and adhere to the rules and policies for specific and general translation
> that have been agreed on by the members.

You can choose to submit translations for review (embedded support in upload and
the web editor), and either have the discussion on your mailing list or even
online with comments.

 http://docs.transifex.org/releases/0.8.html#translation-reviews

In the end, it all boils down to people. Always. Teams can choose to
only have a few committers. They can discuss things on a list. They
can have rules needed to be followed before committing, like offline
translation and testing. You can be the coordinator for your team for
MC, define your own rules, and choose who can commit. Team
coordinators can have full power on who can commit to their files.

>> http://www.midnight-commander.org/nopaste/4Morten/translation-team-settings.png
>> As you see, it's able to add coordinators, members and/or maillist...
>
> Okay, but since teams are already in place around the globe and connected
> to the Translation Project, I do not see the need for this site.
> The Translation Project works well...

It's awesome that the TP has worked great for your team, but I don't think this
is the case for the whole translation community. I believe that having
per-project teams is vital for a good coordination, high participation and
increased security.

TP is great, but the very reason tools like Transifex.net have been built, is
because lots, lots of people were expecting more things from their translation
management solutions.

> you cannot expect the same level of team participation in Transifix
> as in the Translation Project which has been around since 1996.
> Transifix, who knows, may be gone next year...

/me crosses fingers this won't happen. The feedback we've been getting so
far shows it won't. I'm a happy man. =)

I do believe that doing everything upstream, both as in "upstream
projects" as well as in "with the upstream translation community on
Transifex.net" has way more benefits for everyone.

But still, any community wanting to run its own Transifex instance is free
to do so. =)

If you haven't done so already, I'd love if you gave Tx a fair
test-run and report back with anything you'd like to see fixed! We're
always open for suggestions!

-d



-- 
Dimitris Glezos

Transifex: The Multilingual Publishing Revolution
http://www.transifex.net/ -- http://www.indifex.com/