Internalisation and Rosetta "Lost In Translation"

[Dafydd Harries]

Ar 19/01/2005 am 01:14, ysgrifennodd Hasan Akyol:
> First of all i would like to let few people realise what a mess
> translation of Open Source Software is in. 
> 
> I appreciate all the hard efforts of people sitting in front of a
> monitor, don't get me wrong Rosetta is an excellent piece of effort
> which will have great potential if someone did something about it.
> 
> Well i speak 3 languages and I'm trying to help the Open Source
> community as much as i can, but the problem is, i have spent 2 hours
> translating a few files then realised that it had already been
> translated by someone else somewhere else on the web.
> 
> My concern is that a lot of people will find it a lot easier if all
> translations for all the Open Source Applications are done in one
> central location.
> 
> By all means start a flame war, but Open Source and Internalisation is
> going no where if the data is becoming redundant.
> 
> Can some people from GNOME, KDE, DEBIAN, REDHAT etc, come together and
> form a translation coalition to use (for instance) Rosetta for all the
> Internalisation.
> 
> I would love to discuss this further with anyone out there who feels we
> should have a central location for translations, this will allow
> everybody who has a browser and a knowledge of a language to translate
> and support the community.
> 
> Otherwise we are just becoming redundant and "lost in translation"
> 
> Regards,

Much as it would be good if everybody used the same system for
translation, the tools which people use are always going to be a matter
of preference. Some people who will prefer using KBabel, Emacs or other
tools to Rosetta for the forseeable future.

So we must try and work around this problem rather than wishing it
didn't exist.

There are things we can do to minimise duplication of work:

 - Always import all translations into Rosetta. This is currently a
   little difficult since you have to import translations one by one.
   However, we've been working on being able to import .tar.gz files of
   translations so as to be able to import many files easily.

 - Keeping Rosetta up to date with translations made outside Rosetta.
   Being able to import tar files should help here also. We have plans
   to integrate Rosetta with CVS and other version control systems to
   help with this.

 - Keeping in touch with the authors of what you're translating.
   Unfortunately, you cannot always rely on the authors to check Rosetta
   and use your translators. Contacting authors and discussing things
   with them is often a fun and positive thing to do.

Other suggestions of how we can minimise this sort of problem is
welcome.

-- 
Dafydd