Re: [Gaim-devel] Gaim translations and translation projects

[Christian R. <me...@gn...>]

m=E5n 2003-01-13 klockan 01.38 skrev Luke Schierer:
> Gaim is not now, and has no intention of becoming a Gnome project. :-)
> as such, recieving translations here on gaim-devel or in the patch=20
> tracker is the ideal way, I or another developer can commit them to cvs.
> luke

Hi luke!
Perhaps what I was trying to say came out in a bad way. I am in no way
trying to force or persuade you to become a part of the GNOME project,
or use GNOME cvs. That's certainly not my intention. Being an
independant project with independant resources has its own advantages,
both practical and historical, and I fully understand that. I don't want
to step on anyone's toes here. It's just that what development resources
you use, or plan to use, is closely related to what answer fits best
with the following.

What I'm trying to do is just get a decision on which translation
project you want to use for gaim. I understand that "no translation
project at all" may seem like an easy and "ideal" path for a developer,
but to have a larger amount of rather complete and high-quality
translations, use of a translation project really helps. This is because
use of a translation project does not only facilitate the work of the
developer, but also the translators. There are many problems in
translation of a piece of software that use of a translation project
helps solving:

1) Translators will usually have to find out about the software and
contact developers to announce their interest in translating, and hope
for a reply with instructions.
In a translation project, information about all software available for
translation are available to all translators immediately.

2) Developers will have to spend time replying on such "interested in
translating" mails, with possibly detailed instructions most of the time
and perhaps even instructions on how to use the tools (po format and
gettext) in some cases.
In a translation project, translators have access to manuals and help
from other translators, so developers will not need to be contacted
directly most of the time.

3) All translators need to find out on their own how to get a fresh pot
file to use when creating a new translation or every time they want to
update an existing one.
In a translation project, all translators have immediate access to the
latest pot file sent out for translation (TP) or the pot file generated
from latest cvs (GTP).

4) Translators need to ask developers or spend a significant amount of
time on the development mailing list to know when the next release is
about to happen so that they can update translations in preparation for
it, and developers may need to respond to each and every one of those
questions individually.
In a translation project, all translators are notified immediately when
there is a new pot file available for translation (TP), or the
developers send mail to a certain address (GTP).

5) Developers need to keep track of which translations are actively
maintained and may have to do some administration in directing new
translation volunteers for already existing translations into getting in
contact with the old translator etc.
In a translation project, all of that is taken care of by the
reespective language team inside the translation project. All
translators in a translation project are instructed to first and
foremost be in active contact with their own language team, so
translation maintainership will be resolved inside the language teams
themselves, and need not be handled by developers.

6) Developers may be faced with the choice of an old and not updated
existing translation, and a new and complete one from a new and
independant volunteer. However, for someone not very familiar with the
language, it may be difficult to see potential differences in quality
and the like. It may not be obvious even in extreme cases; even if one
of the translations would look like taken directly from babelfish and be
full of typos, and the other one being reviewed and spell-checked by
many other translators. As a developer, one usually only has the state
of completeness as a basis for which translation to use, and that may
not always be the best choice from a quality perspective.
In a translation project, translations are often reviewed and
spell-checked by other translators in the respective language teams, who
have experience in the language.

That's just some of the advantages of using a translation project that I
can think of right now. Perhaps all of them don't apply in your case,
but there still are other advantages.

As you can see, there isn't much difference between not using a
translation project at all, and using the TP
(http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/contrib/po/HTML/). Basically, the only
difference is that you send a pot file there once in a while, usually
before a release, that you direct new translation volunteers that get in
touch with you directly to the TP instead, and that you get less
administration with translators (and most likely more complete
translations in the end). The use of the TP is also what I recommend if
you don't want to use GNOME cvs.

If you instead use GNOME cvs, you'll use the GNOME Translation Project
(GTP; http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gtp/) instead. The difference
is here that translators commit their translations themselves into cvs,
as translators usually have a cvs account themselves, or another person
in their language team has it and can commit it for them. (Also, since
you use a cvs common with the rest of the GNOME project, there are many
more people that can help with applying approved patches and the like,
or help with fixing bugs. My experience tells me that this is more
common than not; developers are more likely to get interested and
engaged in other projects if the other project is just a "cvs co module"
away and they can help fixing it directly after getting approval via
mail or irc. Please note though that I cannot in any way guarantee that
gaim would be accepted into GNOME cvs, that's not my decision, but based
on my experience I would be surprised if it wouldn't).

So, again, please don't take this as "random guy tries to force us to
become part of GNOME", that's certainly not my intention. I just want
you to choose to use a translation project, and the decision of what
translation project to use is closely related to your plans for the
future, since they work in different ways and one of those mentioned
here is tied to using GNOME cvs, and one is not.
And hopefully I have also outlined in enough detail why I think that not
using any translation project at all but instead handling all
translators on your own has its own share of problems, and why I think
that the benefits of using a translation project would be beneficial
both for you and translators.


Cheers, and thanks for reading my lengthy mail,
Christian