Your message dated Sun, 10 Sep 2023 14:11:41 -0700
with message-id <87fs3lvilu....@hope.eyrie.org>
and subject line Re: Bug#917995: debian-policy: drop section 1.6 Translations
has caused the Debian Bug report #917995,
regarding debian-policy: drop section 1.6 Translations
to be marked as done.
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917995: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=917995
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--- Begin Message ---
Package: debian-policy
Version: 4.3.0.1
Severity: normal
Hi,
I hereby propose to drop section 1.6 Translations and the following
sentence: "When translations of this document into languages other
than English disagree with the English text, the English text takes
precedence."
If it is wrongly translated, then the English text probably isn't
clear enough (otherwise the translation would have the same meaning)
and would need to be clarified anyway to avoid being ambigious. Even
if not, the same process can be used to clarify the meaning of
non-English versions.
There should be no need to put one language over others.
Ansgar
--- End Message ---
--- Begin Message ---
Ian Jackson <ijack...@chiark.greenend.org.uk> writes:
> Sean Whitton writes:
>> I'm still inclined to prioritise unblocking people, by giving them a
>> way of resolving disputes between versions of the document without
>> asking on d-policy, but let's see.
> It is the English text of policy that is reviewed and discussed and
> approved here. That is, the "untranslated" policy. It is quite wrong
> to say that the English text is not special. If it is desired to
> provide normative text in other language(s), that text should be
> discussed and approved in the same way as the English text.
> Even so, that leaves open the possibility for multiple normative texts
> which disagree. (This has occurred frequently in international treaties
> with multiple normative texts and is a source of trouble.)
I agree with Ian's argument here.
Policy doesn't have a lot of resources for writing text, let alone
translating text, so realistically our translations are unlikely to be
comprehensive and will probably be the work of one or two people. I think
they may be very useful because Policy is a complicated text and reading
complicated descriptions in one's non-native language is difficult, but in
practice I expect the most common use of the translations will be in
conjuction with the English text.
The English text is where nearly all of the work and review goes at
present, so it is special in that sense. The delegated Policy Editors
only maintain the English text. It's common in that situation to point
that out in the document.
I hear Jonathan's point that treating Policy as a standards document is
perhaps a triumph of hope over experience, but in practice it is used to
settle disagreements in Debian, however imperfectly, and in those cases
the English text is the one that's been peer-reviewed and is more likely
to resolve the disagreement.
Given all of this, and the general lack of consensus in this bug for
making a change, I'm going to close this bug.
--
Russ Allbery (r...@debian.org) <https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
--- End Message ---
