Hi Michael,
On 30/11/2010 13:46, Michael Wheatland wrote:
For those interested, Drupal is a very powerful platform for multi-lingual
sites.
A summary presentation of the aspects of the website that involves
internationalisation can be found here:
http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/File:LibreOffice_Drupal_website_language_management.odp
So some feedback on the presentation:
Slide 6: Functions of the development, marketing, design and
documentation teams are common to all languages. Marketing and
documentation workflows are not common to all languages. Marketing is
dedicated to countries and of course different for each (see for example
if I remember well the Otto story in Brazil), and documentation workflow
is settled by language teams too.
Slide 8: What is translation phase? We do not have translation phase
else than for the product (UI HC2).
Slide 9: Categorisation is in pink but I don't see to what it refers.
Slide 10: All along the presentation, it's about adapting translation,
but what if we don't want this page at all? We are creating our own
content depending on the area of interest of the language teams, the
size of the language teams, the representation of the language teams,
etc. The French and German language teams won't use the same interface
as the Fon or Bambara language teams. They never had the chance to
participate under CollabNet infrastructure, I hope that will be possible
now.
Slide 12: of course if we don't want this interface, we will be able to
use another one. For example, we are going to settle mg.libreoffice.org
with only one page named Tonga Soa containing contact information (such
as a phone number and local addresses) for localization in this local
language, could you confirm that it will be possible?
Slide 17: About Automatic translation, you say Allow people from very
small native language communities to feel part of the community in term
of inclusion, this is non sense. Again bad English translated will never
give a good understanding to somebody reading a language which is 2nd or
3rd. Believe me, you need to do much more to get those languages on
board, unless you're able to use automatic translation in these very
small language communities.
Slide 18: as already said automatic translation for templates doesn't
work. Even for a given language, you'll have several differences
depending on the country it is used.
I would like to invite all people who are involved in Native Language teams
and translation to give feedback on this presentation here or on the wiki:
http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Website/Drupal/i18n
Charles already reacts on that and I second his reflexion. Now, if I
understand well your presentation, we are able to create the interface,
the content, etc. So if it's this way it's ok for me.
One thing to take note of not covered in the presentation:
Native Language Teams will have their own discussion area much the same way
the marketing or development team will.
The difference is that we need dedicated lists, such as QA, l10n or
marketing.
One aspect we need to address is automatic translations and if and when they
will be used on the site. This is discussed somewhat in the presentation.
Also I would like to come back on Quality Assurance. Please consider
that aspect too because the manual tests need to be adapted depending on
the language. We need to test beginning punctuation and end punctuation,
leading spaces, dates, accentuated characters, translation, orientation,
etc depending on the language. So the English test which is the master
can't be automatically translated. By the same way, we use dedicated
documents that need to be attached to the test.
The best for us would be to be able to get those tests on Pootle because
we could use our terminology or glossary tools to get consistency
between the test and the UI.
Also, I've seen the discussion that Danishka initiated about stores.
Please be aware that some language teams already have online stores, may
be you would like get in contact with them first.
Thanks to those who initiated this discussion and please let me know if you
have any questions.
I hope you don't get me wrong and don't take my remarks as a lack of
consideration or recognition for you work. I'm working with language
communities for a long time (sometime very small ones) and I would like
to make sure to get them with us, hence the energy I put in this
discussion.
I hope this will help you to see our needs and avoid to waste time on
things we won't use finally. I've ccing the l10n list and will ask them
to react to Marc message too.
Kind regards
Sophie
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