Hi all, As you must be knowing by now, some of us (you can find us in the channel #olpc-pootle) have been working on having a better translation workflow for the software (and maybe, eventually the content as well) that is going to run on the XO. There seems to be a bit of confusion on what is actually happening, and this mail is to clear up any doubts. My apologies in advance if I manage to bore someone too much, or if I somehow increase the level of confusion :-).
** In short ** We will be using Pootle to manage translations, translation teams as well as individual translators. Pootle will enable translation team leads (and members in certain cases) to commit to dev.laptop.org directly from the Pootle web interface. We have tried to minimise developer involvement in this, developers should only be aware that contents of the po/ directory might change, so before doing a release, please remember to pull in the latest translations. ** The tool to be used ** We want the maximum number of people to participate in translation process. Even if someone does not have direct write access to the translations, s/he should be able to suggest improvements. The best way to do this is to use web based interfaces, and Pootle (http://translate.sourceforge.net/wiki/pootle/index) seems to be the best tool for doing this. ** The details of the Pootle setup ** We have created three groups of software, namely XO Core, XO Bundled and XO Extras. This grouping makes it easier to gauge the level of support for a particular language in the XO. For example, if Nepali (ne) has 95% of XO Core translated, and 75% of XO Bundled, we can say that the level of support for Nepali in the XO is pretty good. This will also help resource starved l10n teams to assign translators more effectively. More information on this is available at http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Pootle/Files. We are using a somewhat complicated symlinking scheme for achieving this grouping, and the scripts used to generate the links are undergoing all kinds of testing atm. And yes - we are trying to keep the filenames as consistent as possible :-) ** Updating of POT and PO files ** One of the issues that we have been trying to figure out for the past few days is how to ensure that translators are translating the latest files. The generally agreed upon solution is to have a GIT hook at the Pootle end, which rebuilds the POT files (and also the PO files) from the sources as soon as a checkout (git pull) is completed. A checkout happens when the administrator for a particular language clicks on "Update from template" button from Pootle's web based interface. This has two advantages 1. It takes away the burden of keeping translations up to date from the developer. 2. The PO file updates (as a result of the POT file update) are expected by the translator, since the language admin has explicitly asked for an update, by using the update from template button. Hence the translators do not get confused. ** Getting your project translated ** If you want your project to be translated by Pootle, the correct way to ask would be to file a ticket in Trac. The final details on this will be published on the Pootle installation itself. We support non dev.laptop.org hosted projects as well (though it is not tested), but if you already have a established translation process, stick to that. ** Starting a language team ** Again, file a ticket. Details will be available on the Pootle installation itself very soon. ** Current Status ** Most of the scripts, etc are ready, and we are quite satisfied with the results of what we have seen so far using local repositories. The only major "blocker" issue that is left to be resolved is the question of GIT access to dev.laptop.org for the Pootle user. The most optimal solution for this is to use the newly released support for GIT submodules (where the po directory can be a separate submodule of a project). This isolates the PO directory from the rest of the project, minimising the chances of Pootle messing something other than translations :-). However, we would like to hear from developers on this - does having a new submodule under your project tree complicate your job ? Information on git submodules and how to use them is available at http://git.or.cz/gitwiki/GitSubmoduleTutorial Questions, comments, suggestions, flames on the rest of the mail is welcome :-) Warm regards, and thank you for continued support and patience. Sayamindu -- Sayamindu Dasgupta http://sayamindu.randomink.org/ramblings _______________________________________________ Sugar mailing list [email protected] http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/sugar
