Proposal: Improve peer review and team work in Rosetta

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

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Hi David

Thanks for giving feedback on Rosetta.

On 6 Aug, 2005, at 7:35 PM, David Nielsen wrote:
> ...
> I propose the following additions:
>
> * All strings must be reviewed.
> * At least 2 people vote yes on a given string for it to be verified.
> * Any team member can veto a string or term (thus labeling it
> unverified).

At the moment, something translated in Rosetta can have one of two 
translation acceptance policies.
*   Open: anyone can make a translation.
*   Restricted (currently called "Closed"): anyone can suggest a
     translation, but only editors can accept suggestions or make final
     translations of their own.

Another policy is planned, Closed, where only editors can make a 
translation. Would this be enough? Are there existing translation 
projects following the model you propose, where every translation must 
be reviewed no matter who supplied it?

> * Rosetta must supply a translation list (a la gtranslators
> autotranslate feature) this list can contain both recommended
> translations and illegal translations (so it warns the translator when
> he uses a big no no word and can suggest words and frases, or even
> autotranslate many strings).

Rosetta already provides suggestions when the same string has been 
translated in another product or distribution. But things like 
glossaries of recommended and verboten words probably won't appear 
until Rosetta 2.0.

> As for Ubuntu (and other distros that uses Rosetta technology)
>
> It would be nice to see timebased translation updates must be issued to
> ensure maximum compliance and coverage in Ubuntu.

What do you mean by "time-based translation updates"? Do you mean 
synchronizing Ubuntu language packs with the translations in Rosetta? 
(The Rosetta hackers are currently working on that for Ubuntu 5.10.) Or 
do you mean delaying Ubuntu releases until particular languages are 
translated?

> Jeff Waugh himself stated the importance of translations to hit 
> markets like Africa, we should ensure that stable releases are in as 
> good a state as we can.

If any government, business, or other organization is interested in 
promoting a native language, they're welcome to contact Canonical, who 
can arrange for Ubuntu to be translated completely into that language.

> It would also be nice to see the bugtracking system tie into Rosetta, 
> so that translators could get notification of translation bugs,

On any translation page, the "Bugs" link should already take you to the 
right place for finding and reporting bugs about the thing you're 
translating.

> string changes

Items where Rosetta has a different translation from the last upstream 
upload/import are shown in purple in Rosetta's bar charts.

> and inform upstream about poorly worded strings. All within the
> Rosetta web interface.
> ...

In the future we hope to let translators explain why they're 
contributing a new translation. I'm not sure it would be useful to let 
people say "the upstream translation is poorly worded" without 
supplying a new translation, though.

Cheers
- -- 
Matthew Thomas
http://mpt.net.nz/
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