Re: [gst-devel] Is it possible to use intltool-update for translation?

[Alexander S. <as...@co...>]

>>>> I am trying to extract, update and translate gstreamer's message stringgs with 
>>>> intltool (http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/gnome/sources/intltool/)
>>> Why are you doing this ?

Honestly - because I am used to intltool. It is a nice tool, works on 
many Gnome programs, gets the job done. More about this below.

>>>> Is there a different way to do the extraction and update besides going through 
>>>> the build procedure?
>>> Probably.  But again, why ? :)

The box I used to try and extract the strings was lacking autopoint, and 
had no Internet connectivity. I am able now to extract the strings of 
gstreamer with the build method.


> I must be missing something.  I send update notifications to the
> translation project, they extract pot files and put them online, and
> they have a whole infrastructure so that all translators need to do is
> translate the file.
> 
> Why would a translator suddenly manually have to extract files ?

Well - it is not suddenly. I am both the committer of the Bulgarian 
Gnome translation team, and the leader of the Bulgarian team of 
Translation project.[1][2]

We would like to have a full Bulgarian translation of gtranslator before 
the next release, *not* after that. The translation project has just a 
single pot-file that gets obsoleted very soon.

Gstreamer is by no means a stable project - it has frequent releases, 
changes in major API-s. I strongly doubt that anyone of the main 
developers keeps the translatable strings stable in a way that Gnome 
stable release does. This means - that the translators have to keep an 
eye on the CVS.

Furthermore - getting just a po-file and just translating it is a vain 
effort. The translators sometimes have to consult the source and decide 
how to translate (and sometimes build the project - to test the 
translation).

Using intltool instead of the build process would be nice, as it enables 
upkeep of statistics - similar to those of Gnome [3]

As I said - we would like to have the next gstreamer release fully 
translated in Bulgarian with the release, not 3 minor releases afterwards.

I would recommend intltool-izing gstreamer as it would pay later on, but 
I do realize that there any other things that gstreamer developers need 
to work on.

And lastly - the translation project robot is such a major PITA, that 
frequently (>50% of the cases) we have to resend the translations over 
and over again.

Best regards:
al_shopov

[1] http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gtp/teams.html
[2] http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/translation/registry.cgi?team=bg
[3] http://l10n-status.gnome.org/