Hi Alexandro,
Biggest issue has to do with the need of context and translation
memory. Basically users have no idea about the context of what they
are translating resulting on very bad translations. However last cycle
we didnt get enough people to translate which make us skip some QA we
do resulting on very rushed translations. This combined with SunGloss
which is stalled and nobody can contribute or updated it or even have
access to it without a cumbersome process.
The style guide is also a bit incomplete compared to other ones from
Gnome and KDE which are also incomplete to a degree.
Finally is the issue of traceability, we don't know who translated
what, and when, yes we know who can do it because of permissions but
we can't tell from those people who actually was the one that
translated that string on that branch of the PO. This is very
frustrating when situations like this happens, and we can't identify
people that shouldnt be translating or just can't assure quality of
their work.
However I think all this could be resolved with a bigger window of
localization and also be able to generate new builds at any time of
the development process. Localization bugs are real bugs and we should
be able to update the build whenever we feel is important.
First of all thank you for your feedback. Let me add a couple of things....
- TMs: translation memories have been used to update translations. TMX
files can be generated out of the latest Pootle content and reused
whenever applicable.
- very bad translations: it would be very useful to have some examples
to see what exactly went wrong and - most of all - to measure how bad is
bad: is it a P1 quality issue, a P2 or a P3? Can you file an issue
reporting at least 3-4 major examples?
- not enough translators: I think that the major problem was not the
fact that you did not get enough people to translate, but most of all
the fact that this was not communicated. It was only at the translation
deadline, that it was communicated that the help content content was
left uncompleted. This could be avoided by communicating this much
earlier. Translators would have had more time to translate and check the
product. This time, the volume of help word count to be translated was
large and starting translating it after translation delivery deadline
under time pressure it's really not ideal for any translators. There was
not time for extra review.
- I like Mechtilde's suggestion to integrate the fixes into 3.2.1. I can
try to deliver you the .po files which have been uploaded to Pootle to
complete the Help content. That should help you better organizing the
review.
- localization window: basically I agree with you: the more time the
better. However, even if we had 2 additional weeks to translate this
time, I missed good communication regarding the difficulty to complete
or to deliver the translations in time. Just to be clear: I am not only
taking about you/the Spanish team. This is an issue that I experienced
with at least 3-4 other teams. So am taking the opportunity to really
encourage any team to communicate ASAP if they have any difficulty in
delivering.
- l10n bugs: I do agree that localization bugs are *real bugs* - no
doubt about this. This is also why they should also follow the release
roadmap and the bug handling rules. All l10n bugs found and fixed within
the l10n testing deadlines have been fixed. L10n bugs declared and
accepted as show stoppers get also fixed
- l10n builds: not sure you followed a previous thread but based on some
N-L teams' requests, we will also provide l10n builds at the latest
translation start date (before translation starts). This is the time
when all features are integrated and the product - even if not yet full
translated - is complete and shows all strings. This should help better
identifying the strings and context during translation
- getting builds at any time of the development process: would the
snapshot developer's builds be a solution for this? You can request to
get Spanish added to the list of the l10n packs currently built:
http://download.openoffice.org/next/index.html
Kind Regards,
Rafaella
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