Ensuring Quality in Ubuntu Translations

Carlos Perelló Marín carlos.perello at canonical.com
Fri Nov 3 16:20:29 GMT 2006


El mar, 31-10-2006 a las 22:16 +0100, Milo Casagrande escribió:
> Il giorno mar, 31/10/2006 alle 21.06 +0100, Carlos Perelló Marín ha
> scritto:
> > Hi,
> 
> Hi!

Hi

> 
> > Well, initially, Rosetta was designed to use teams in a really different
> > way we are using them atm. The concept of an Ubuntu translation team as
> > we have atm is just a QA team. That means that, only the members of that
> > team would be able to change translations for Ubuntu and any other
> > member would add suggestions but they wouldn't change anything.
> > 
> > The problems I think that produced current situation are:
> > 
> > - Our reviewing tools are reduced or unimplemented.
> > - Our UI is not stating anytime that those teams are supposed to be QA
> > teams.
> > - Our documentation is not saying anything about the QA concept either.
> > 
> > 
> > I want to improve this situation and, with our current usage of Rosetta,
> > I know that people needs the concept of 'team' to know the list of
> > persons that are translated for a given distribution/project/product and
> > language.
> > 
> > There are several solutions in my mind:
> > 
> > - Create two teams, ubuntu-l10n-XX (current ones) and ubuntu-l10n-XX-QA
> > and give control over Ubuntu translations to the QA teams and thus, all
> > members of current teams will lose their rights to modify translations
> > directly, they will add suggestions as any other non member would be
> > able to do.
> 
> I think this would be nice for big teams, more than 30-40 translators,
> so they will get at least 10 QA guys, but for small team, 10-20
> translators, they will get maybe 5 QA guys with a lot of work to do on
> different translations (it's not easy to translate a software you don't
> know or at least use). Or we would have the same problem: giving people
> with poor technical skill QA control to help translate, in order to have
> the system translated.

Well, I guess small teams would just keep working like the system we
have right now. Being part of the QA team doesn't mean that you will
only be able to review, you will be to translate too so it shouldn't be
a problem, right?

> 
> > - Create two teams too, but modify our permission system so we only
> > accept suggestions from current ubuntu-l10n-XX teams so you need to join
> > that team to be able to add suggestions. The QA teams are the only ones
> > that will be able to change translations.
> 
> I don't really get it... it looks similar to the above to me...

Yeah, it's mostly the same, the main difference is that first option
will allow anyone, even non members of any team (translators or QA)
would be able to do suggestions, with second option, just the members of
those teams will be able to add suggestions or translations.

> 
> > > = Translation Teams =
> > > 
> > > The basic starting point is that a central part of the Ubuntu
> > > philosophy[1] is that software should be available to all in their local
> > > language.
> > > 
> > > [1] http://www.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/philosophy
> > > 
> > > In order to achieve this, Ubuntu has given a lot of authority (and
> > > responsibility) to the various translation teams that exist in
> > > Launchpad[2]: these teams are responsible for what the operating system
> > > looks like, because the translations which they enter in Rosetta will
> > > eventually go into the operating system.
> > > 
> > > [2] https://launchpad.net/people/?name=ubuntu-l10n&searchfor=teamsonly
> > > 
> > > This is a lot of responsibility for the translation teams. It is clear
> > > that randomly accepting any new member to a team can result in bad
> > > translations. It seems that in the case of the Dutch team it has had
> > > really bad consequences. I refuse to believe that this problem doesn't
> > > exist elsewhere. For example, the Ubuntu French translation team has 250
> > > members (and 1 administrator to approve/disprove new candidates!!), the
> > > German team 86, the Brazilian team 78, etc. It's difficult to imagine
> > > that these members have all been through some kind of quality assurance.
> > 
> > Agreed.
> 
> Agree, but I think it depends also on how Administrators handle this. 
> 

That's something the Ubuntu Translations Coordinator should define, a
policy about what to do to prevent or even punish that bad behaviour.
Rosetta team will do as much as possible to add anything needed to apply
that policy.

> > > Upstream translators on the other hand _do_ go through rigorous quality
> > > assurance. Translations are uploaded to (e.g. GNOME) CVS if the
> > > translator is already well known for good quality translation, or
> > > alternatively if the individual translation is checked first.
> 
> For the italian upstream team (I'm part of it) it works like this:
> - I ask if the package I want to translate is free and then I start to
> translate it
> - When I'm done, I send the po to the ML for revision by all translators
> - I apply the changes
> - Then I send the po for CVS uplaod to the italian administrator, who
> does it (or you can go directly with the developers)
> 
> I only know two intalian people with CVS rights that aren't developers!
>   
> > > = Rosetta =
> > > 
> > > There are lots of ways in which Rosetta can and should help this QA
> > > process, in my opinion. They are all fairly well known bugs, I think.
> > > But they are important ones.
> > > 
> > > The first is technical. It is not nearly as easy to check a proposed
> > > member's translations as it should be. This is a oft-cited bug in
> > > Rosetta. It should be possible to go to a person's profile, and view
> > > each suggestion that person has made for a translation. At the moment,
> > > it is only possible to view which template the person has contributed
> > > to, and then you have to go through all the untranslated strings for
> > > that template, and look for the person's name. Not very convenient.
> > 
> > Hmm, We are preparing that page to link with pofiles instead of just
> > potemplates but I guess we could prepare something like what you
> > describe.
> > 
> > Filed as https://launchpad.net/products/rosetta/+bug/69563
> 
> That would be great!
> It's time consuming going through the entire translation only to search
> for a couple of strings!
>  
> > > The second is technical too. You can't search a package for a particular
> > > string, which means that if you see a bad translation, it's harder to
> > > fix. Worse than that, once a translation is committed, there is no
> > > obvious way of seeing who committed the translation, so people who are
> > > not following guidelines cannot be approached to discuss the problem.
> > > 
> > 
> > The search feature is already in danilo's queue and will be started once
> > he finish native OO.org support.
> 
> I'm waiting for it! :)
> Sometimes, when I find errors, I download the po, correct it and then
> upload it!

Yeah, I think is one of the most demanded features...

> 
> > > The fourth is purely social. The main reason that translation groups
> > > don't do QA is that they are not aware of this need. Given that Ubuntu
> > > has given the translator groups this immense responsibility, it is their
> > > duty (and by implication, that of Rosetta/Launchpad) to make them aware
> > > of it. New teams and team owners/administrators should be made aware of
> > > the importance of assuring quality translations in the distribution. The
> > > other reason that Rosetta needs to take on this social task is that
> > > Rosetta really does make translation very very easy indeed, which rocks.
> > > However, it's vital to ensure that "easy" doesn't equate to "sloppy".
> > 
> > I think this part would be solved by the Ubuntu Translation Coordinator
> > position in Ubuntu. Once the designated person starts handling those
> > tasks we would see what could we do in Rosetta to make his/her live
> > easier.
> 
> I think also some guidelines (on the wiki or directly inside Launchpad)
> would be very useful here. 
> 

Yeah, but that should be done by the coordinator.

> > > My conclusion is that Rosetta helps to go half way towards fulfilling
> > > the promise in Ubuntu's philosophy of making the operating system
> > > available to users in their local language. However, now for the hard
> > > bit: making the operating system available to users in their local
> > > language and _professional_ at the same time. In order to do this,
> > > translation teams need to put quality assurance in place and Rosetta
> > > needs to help them to do this.
> > 
> > Agreed. We, Rosetta team, is trying to reach that point, it takes a lot
> > of time to implement everything needed, but I think we are every day in
> > a better position to reach that goal.
> > 
> > Thanks for your input.
> 
> Thanks for the great work you're doing in Rosetta/Launchpad!
> 

Thank you for using it!

Cheers.

> Ciao!
> 
> -- 
> rosetta-users mailing list
> rosetta-users at lists.ubuntu.com
> https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/rosetta-users
> Learn more about Rosetta: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Rosetta
-- 
Carlos Perelló Marín
Ubuntu => http://www.ubuntu.com
mailto:carlos.perello at canonical.com
http://carlos.pemas.net
Alicante - Spain
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