Hello,
Well I must say I learned a great deal from the Chandler Localization
Sprints I held on July 12th and
13th at EuroPython.
One thing that I had not considered is that localizers also make a
very good focus group on
Chandler usability. Since none of the translators had worked in depth
with Chandler before it was
not only an exercise in how easy is the application to localize but
also how easy is
it for someone to start Chandler and grasp the concepts the
application offers.
There were many issued raised at the Sprint including bugs in the
Chandler code that are hindering a
complete localization, better tools that need to be provided for
localization, and ways that we need to
better organize our strings in code to create a useable Chandler.pot
for translators to work with.
I have summarized the entire experience and next steps as well as
included
a link to the Swedish translation egg here:
http://people.osafoundation.org/bkirsch/postsprint/
Tomorrow, I will open bugs in Bugzilla for the issues preventing a
complete localization.
The bugs will not be blockers for Preview.
Based on the feedback from the Sprint, I feel I can say with
confidence that we need
to do a better job with our user visible strings. Specifically there
are a number of strings
that appear in our Chandler.pot that are either inconsistent,
redundant, gramatically incorrect,
or do not require localization.
I do not expect all the issue detailed in http://
people.osafoundation.org/bkirsch/postsprint/
to be addressed for Preview. However, we can start off on the right
foot by fixing our
Python level translatable strings to produce a better Chandler.pot
template for translators.
It is great that OSAF has done a Localization String Freeze on
Chandler (thanks Philippe).
This is a large step in the right direction. However, my
recommendation at this point is
that we fix the problems in our Chandler.pot at the Python source
level. If we don't do that
what will end up happening is all the grammatically correct strings
which give proper context
to translators will end up in our en translation egg and not in the
Chandler.pot which is really
where we want them.
So my proposal is to maintain a Localization Freeze for all developers.
Mimi will be the sole source of truth regarding what text should
appear in
our Chandler.pot. I will be the interface for converting those ideas
in to
strings in our Python code. I will also provide feedback to Mimi when
I see
a string change that may cause localization problems.
I will have commit rights to change any strings in the Chandler code
that need to
augment for better localization. For all commits, I will first create
a bug and attach
a patch which will require approval by Philippe before I can check in.
Any changes made that are reflected in the Chandler.pot will be
merged with the
Swedish translation provided by Jonas and Jacob. In many cases, the
Swedish strings
are not exact matches to the English strings anyway since the English
strings were confusing.
In the Sprint, I would verbally give them the context for a piece of
confusing text and they would
do the translation based on the intent and not the physical string
structure. So hopefully the merge
won't be too much of a headache.
They did not include keyboard shortcuts in translated strings as
there is a major issue
with Chandler putting these shortcuts in the English keys (the
details are in my post sprint
wrap up page).
I await comments on my proposal.
Even if we only ship a limited number of translations for Preview but
get it right I would
rather do that then look amateurish by distributing a .pot file that
is not representative of
the high quality of work done on Preview.
We have many more releases to improve the localization process and
with our
localizations reach a wider audience for Chandler.
-Brian
Brian Kirsch
Internationalization Architect / Mail Service Engineer
Open Source Applications Foundation
543 Howard Street 5th Floor
San Francisco, CA 94105
http://www.osafoundation.org
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