Re: Questionable quality translatable strings

[Lucian Adrian Grijincu <lucian grijincu gmail com>]

On Sun, Jun 6, 2010 at 6:52 PM, Zeeshan Ali (Khattak) <zeenix gmail com> wrote:
>  There are only two developers and all developers are aware of the
> use of bugzilla. I asked you to report issues there cause its easier
> to track the status of bugs.

I knew you're a new GNOME project and wanted all the devs to be aware
of the translatable string guidelines, not only the ones that happened
to look at that particular bug. I wasn't aware of the size of the
development team. I'll go and fill a bug, so you'll track this more
easily.


>> I don't know if you're aware of this but you have been recently added
>> to the "Damn Lies" translation project
>
>  I'm aware of that.
>
>> http://l10n.gnome.org/languages/ro/gnome-3-0/ui/.
>> You will most surely see translations trickling in even though GNOME
>> is not yet in string freeze.
>
>   Why does it say 0% for rygel?

Because the link I provided was for the Romanian language. I started
translating it, but haven't yet finished.


>   I pointed that out to people on desktop-devel-list and they asked
> me to mark any strings that could be seen by the user to be marked for
> translations. So thats what I did. In fact they required me to do so
> for being consider for inclusion into GNOME. Would have been nicer if
> they had pointed me to the URL you pointed to below.


I'm sorry that they didn't. It would have saved us both some time :)


> "These messages are of technical nature, yet they aren't only usable
> for the developers when debugging, but may sometimes help other
> technical people to resolve an issue themselves. As such, these
> messages should be marked for translation, since in many places in the
> world being technical and skilled with administering computers, and
> having good skills in technical English, isn't necessarily the same."
>
>  The same applies to most of the strings you asked if they should be
> seen by a user.


Well, if the messages are addressed to a technical user who would be
able to fix problems, there shouldn't be any reason for strings that
say "this worked fine", "that worked fine also", "going to check if
this works ok", "yep, it did".

I'll exemplify with strings I've given as an example before:
   "Checking for gstreamer playbin..."
   "Using playbin2"


Imagine if Totem would constantly chat with the user:
  Checking if GStreammer MP3 support is present...
   Yep it is.
   Checking for OGG suport...
   Ogg suport found.


The user should be interested only in actual error messages, not
progress checkpoints. Also instructions on what consequences the
errors will have can sometimes be very helpful, as would general
fix-up instructions.
   "Could not create a GStreammer Playbin2 object, using Playbin. For
better performance install a newer version of the GStreammer xxx
package."
   "Could not find any GStreammer Playbin. Sound support disabled.
Install the GStreamer xxx package for sound support."

Disclaimer: I have no idea what Playbin/Playbin2/vs no Playbin will do
to Rygel and where they are used. I said "sound support" because
Playbin is a GStreammer class and I associate GStreammer with sounds
and codecs, but I may be completely far off.


-- 
 .
..: Lucian