On Fri, Oct 31, 2008 at 03:18:54PM +0700, Jeroen Vermeulen wrote: > David Planella wrote: > >What it boils down to is something that I feel has been always missing > >in the Ubuntu translation process, and is a team or an individual who > >acts as a coordinator between the translators and the developers. The > > That, to me, is the heart of the problem. The Ubuntu translation > process as a whole needs to be managed by someone who is involved in > Ubuntu on a full-time basis. > > In fact the Rosetta team has been pushing for the creation of this role > since early this year, and Arne has for some time been fulfilling its > technical aspects. A lot of this work fell to Carlos in the past, but I > don't think it makes sense for the application developers to keep track > in enough detail to coordinate the Ubuntu translation process. From our > perspective, we'd much prefer to have more knowledgeable people manage > the process and tell us what we can do *in the code* to facilitate their > work.
I agree, of course, although I would say that problems tend to arise when application developers become entirely disconnected from the people at the sharp end. (I don't think that's what you mean.) > >I understand your position. The only short-term improvement I can > >imagine in this process at this point is better information flow (i.e. > >that translators know at least how it all works) and translating > >directly upstream. Locking the upstream translations would even be > >better, but that is again material for another discussion. > > Colin, this may have come up before but might it help to register the > Ubuntu version of the installer as an independent project on Launchpad? > That would give you much more fine-grained control over translation > access, e.g. to delegate it only to people who are aware of the > package's special situation. I think this would be the wrong model. The Ubuntu installer is not supposed to have a separate upstream existence from the Debian installer (apart from the graphical installer component Ubiquity, that is, which isn't at issue here), and I think it would be a mistake to pretend that it does. For one thing, it would make the location of branches very confusing indeed. Instead, I would prefer that Launchpad Translations implement what I see as an important design principle in Launchpad (albeit one honoured more in the breach than the observance to date): In general, operations that can be performed on upstream projects should be able to be performed on distribution source packages as well. The lack of this equivalence in all sorts of places in Launchpad has long been a thorn in the Ubuntu team's side. This is something I've been working through with the Launchpad Code team recently too, so that we can have branches attached to distribution source packages as well as to upstream projects. I think, at minimum, we ought to be able to have certain privileges attached to translations of source packages for those who can upload them to the relevant distribution anyway. We probably also ought to be able to alter translation privileges on certain source packages, although I think this should be the exception rather than the rule. All that said, I don't think limiting the *people* who can commit to installer translations in Ubuntu is the right model. Instead, I think there should be a straightforward way to limit the set of *strings* offered for translation. The good news is that this does not necessarily have to involve significant changes to Launchpad. Currently, I generate a master set of POT and PO files for the installer which Launchpad Translations administrators then upload. We could split those files into three big lumps: one for the strings that come directly from Debian and should not generally be changed; one for the strings that require branding changes in Ubuntu; and one for the strings that are new in Ubuntu. Those could then be uploaded to separate templates in Launchpad, and translators could be given separate advice about what to translate. We could maintain the filtering for this on the Ubuntu side; I don't expect that it would be all that difficult. Jeroen (or others), what do you think about this idea? -- Colin Watson [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- ubuntu-translators mailing list ubuntu-translators@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-translators
