Rosetta

[Dwayne Bailey]

On Thu, 2004-09-30 at 11:46, Dafydd Harries wrote:
> Dwayne Bailey had a look at Rosetta recently, and I thought I'd forward
> his comments to the list, along with some replies from me. This feedback
> is really useful -- thanks Dwayne!
> 
> Ar 16/09/2004 am 00:56, ysgrifennodd Dwayne Bailey:
> > I like
> > ------
> > - The dashboard - although formating got wonky on some pages
> 
> I think the dashboard has been improved since you looked at it.
> 
> > - Personal list of projects
> > - Suggest a project
> > - Download PO files to translate offline or translate online
> > 
> > 
> > Don't like
> > ----------
> > - Multiple languages shown in the translation interface.  More likely to
> > create bad translations then assist
> 
> I'm sure we could improve the interface for the common case of
> translating into one language at a time.

Who translates into more than one language at a time?

> We're planning to develop a feature where one can display multiple
> languages in a read-only mode. For example, a translator for Brazilian
> Portuguese might well find existing translations for Portuguese from
> Portugal useful while translating.

I'm not sure its useful for languages other than the one you mention. 
It is nice when grappling with a word choice to see how other have done
it.  However, there is the risk that you will simply imitate the
translation from the other language - bad thing.

I could see this as useful in a review process.

> > - Getting to the translation interface was quite complicated,  Would be
> > nice to be there almost straight away.
> 
> Agreed, the navigation is a bit clumsy.
> 
> I'm hoping this is mitigated by the fact that once you've found the
> right template for the first time, it can be added to your list and will
> show up on your dashboard.

I need to use this a bit more thoroughly to see if it works.

> > Would like
> > ----------
> > - More stats on dashboard like rate of change expected date of
> > completion, etc
> 
> These would indeed be useful. A simple indicator of how complete a file
> is on the translation page would also be useful.
> 
> > - An idea of what the target for a package is
> 
> In terms of percentage complete?

Projects like Gnome and KDE have targets some loosely formulated some
quite explicit but maliable.  In KDE they are:

1) Get you language into CVS - complete kdelibs.po (this shows
commitment if anything)

2) Get your language officially released - complete a list of tasks to
various percentage targets eg kdebase = 80% kdelibs = 95%

Would be nice to know how far you are on those targets.

> > - More aids on the translation interface (highlighting cues - eg
> > variables, HTML, etc are different colours; pre-commit checks - eg
> > accelerator checks, variables correct to stop errors early)
> 
> Absolutely. Hilighting interpolation sequences should be fairly easy.
> These messages will have the c-format flag set. Detecting XML/HTML would
> be a little trickier, but it's certainly doable.
> 
> Checking translations before they are written to the database is
> definitely something we need to do.

Have a look at our pofilter program in the Translate Toolkit.

> > Couldn't really check
> > ---------------------
> > - Translation interface - got errors on commit
> 
> Are you still getting these errors? Hopefully they'll be fixed by now.
> 
> > - How you determine readiness
> 
> What do you mean by "readiness"?

The translations are complete but have they been reviewed?  When are
these files ready for inclusion in an upstream package?

> > - How you handle project such as Gnome and KDE which have hierarchical
> > groupings of translation files vs Evolution or smaller projects which
> > usually only have one file.
> 
> There's still work to be done on handling large projects well, but we
> have some ideas on how to do it.
> 
> > - How you store stuff in the backend
> 
> All our data is stored in a Postgres database.
> 
> > - How you would interact with the upstream projects localisation effort.
> 
> The need to work well with translators working outside of Rosetta is
> something we're very aware of.

I think its also looking at how to work alongside existing teams to
enhance what they do.  Allow translators to move off the portal onto a
standalone tool like KBabel - which will be faster if your good.  Allow
professional translators to use tools that they already use.

But these can be tackled later.

> > - One translation section indicated missing plural info so not sure how
> > you would handle plurals
> 
> Plural forms are something which it's very difficult to present in an
> obvious fashion. I think users will need to learn what plural forms are
> in general and what the plural forms are for their particular languages.
> Of course, if Rosetta can help the user to understand it, then by all
> means it should.

KDE has a list of the number of plurals somewhere.

The simplest I would guess would be to present N number of input boxes
depending on the number of plural forms for that language. 
Understanding how the plural forms should be constructed would be the
job of the translator.

It could of course show some examples to the user of how their
translation will be populated if you have the Plural-Form definition for
the language.

> > - KDE and gettext style comments not sure how these would come through
> > in the interface.
> 
> This is something we're planning to add soon.

Good as the KDE ones can be quite useful.  Maybe another items to not
present to a new translator.  Although you have the luxury of removing
the KDE comment from the actual string so a translator is not tempted to
translate the comment.

-- 
Kind regards
Dwayne Bailey

dwayne at translate.org.za   
+27-12-343 0389 (home/work)  +27-83-443 7114 (cell)

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