Hi JM!
Thanks for your very detailed and enlightening answers!
The way I see it, there are a few things that affect the motivation of
translators.
Goal-related:
A. Fix the translations for myself (or my kids)
B. Fix the translations for all DDL users
C. Fix the translations for all Debian(-derivative) users
D. Fix the translations for all users of the same upstream software
Process and tool related:
E. As little translation work as possible (i.e. reuse others work))
F. Easy to get started doing translation work
G. Good tools for doing the translation work
H. Instant gratification (see the results ASAP)
My motivation was/is mainly A, but BCD are obviously important too. It
would help if there were instructions (and tools) for how to recompile DDL
packages using the latest translations from Transifex. This way, one could
see the results immediately (H) and probably also achieve better quality
translations, as you notice errors better when you see the translated
messages in their actual context of use.
Transifex is nice in that it couples A and B - you can benefit both
yourself and DDL at the same time (a local editor such as Poedit doesn't
encourage sharing your work). But it would be even better to have a shared
translation environment for ABCD, to avoid duplicating work on the level
of upstream packages, Debian and DDL.
Better syncing from DDL to upstream would enable C and/or D as well, while
timely importing of upstream translations into DDL would further E.
On Sat, 4 Jan 2014, [email protected] wrote:
Translations progress depends a lot on translators availability for a
given language. Languages that are very well translated rely on
translators that follow the project on a long term basis. But for most
languages, translators are available during a shorter period and
translation progress stops as soon as they get busy with other
activities.
I can understand this, DDL being a volunteer effort etc. It's not a
problem as long as new translators become available (like myself - but no
promises on long term availability!) and it's easy to get started (F). I
was pleased to be accepted into the Finnish team within an hour or two of
putting in my request to join, but it would have been frustrating to have
to wait a week or more just to be able to start typing in messages in
Transifex.
Minor releases are the official way to get translations back to
DoudouLinux (DDL in short) after a major version is published. As the
latest release 2.1 was out in early December, next update will probably
not get published before March (version 2.2).
Right. So for both A and B, you currently have to wait a few months - not
quite instant gratification (H). This is OK, but at least A could be
improved with recompilation instructions (see above).
Also we are currently working on version 2.5, a migration of DDL from
Debian Squeeze to Debian Wheezy. The purpose of 2.5 is to prepare 3.0,
which will bring updated translations from Transifex (for Debian Wheezy)
? and probably larger changes in the software selection. Version 2.5
will be kind of ?vanilla? release concerning translations.
This sounds promising. But what do you mean by vanilla translations?
1. Squeeze packages with current Transifex translations (2.1 status quo)
2. Squeeze packages with Wheezy-updated Transifex translations
3. Wheezy packages with current Transifex translations
4. Wheezy packages with Wheezy translations (no Transifex)
5. Wheezy packages with Wheezy-updated Transifex translations
Unfortunately no. Some of our translators may punctually push their work
upstream but we have nobody to push all our translation work upstream.
If you are interested in doing this job, you're welcome! This would
avoid us in the future the huge work of porting our existing
translations to newer versions of applications when we are changing of
Debian version.
OK, thanks. I will look into it for some packages.
I think one major obstacle is that since DDL uses stable Debian versions
(or even oldstable), and Debian stable releases tend to be several
releases/years behind upstream packages, there is likely a big version gap
between what DDL uses and where upstream development is focused.
It could be argued that real development (including translation work)
would best be done in the upstream projects, not in distributions like
Debian or derivatives like DDL. This way everyone using the software would
eventually benefit. But if your end goal is something like A, it's not
very motivating to work with upstream and have to wait several years for
the changes to trickle down first to Debian and then to DDL.
Similarly, merging the latest upstream translations to our ones on
Transifex would currently require too much work for our team. Of course
we should do this to avoid translators redo a job that has already been
done upstream. I made trials a long time ago to automate this work
partly. Basically I was trying to identify the URL of some upstream
translation sources in order to merge them into our translations using
i18n tools. Again you can take over from me if you feel interested in
this topic.
I won't promise anything yet, but it'd be nice to get access to the
tools/scripts you used for syncing. I'm somewhat familiar with i18n tools,
having used gettext etc. in some of my own projects.
As you've understood, most probably no. Maybe I'm wrong however, I can't
be sure. For example I noticed, working on the migration to Wheezy, that
the LXDE team took some of our patches back into their official source
code. Debian derivatives guys have developed a smart system that
regularly fetches source packages from distribution derivatives and then
publish the diff of packages officially in Debian. If Debian developers
take time to look at these diff's while they also contribute to the
upstream project, they can then decide to adopt changes made by
derivatives.
Good to know, I wasn't aware of this (loose) coordination between Debian
derivatives and vanilla Debian.
That said, translations in Debian are managed by independent translation
teams. A long time ago I contacted the man managing the French team and
he explained me we should contact each package manager and each upstream
project to contribute back with our translations. If you are interested
in making this topic progress, you should probably start by polling
again some Debian translation teams as well as some upstream projects.
OK.
-Osma
--
*** Osma Suominen / Osuuskunta Sange *** [email protected] ***
*** PL 197, 00131 Helsinki *** 040 - 5255 882 ***
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