Gnome l10n issues in Rosetta

On Tue, 2005-11-01 at 10:58 +0300, Aiet Kolkhi wrote:
> Hello Jordi and all,

Hi

> 
> I'm afraid we are still having some issues with integrating GNOME l10n
> projects to Rosetta online translation tool.
> 
> As I have reported earlier, there were multiple modules (like gaim)
> that existed in different projects, which resulted in various people
> translating the same module. This problem has been solved, but GNOME
> l10n poject seems to exist in two different projects:

Not really the l10n project but the translation resources...

> 
> There is an official GNOME l10n project as well as Ubuntu Breezy
> project surprisingly both of the projects include GNOME modules.

That's because Ubuntu distributes GNOME and it also needs to be
translated. We have some patches that, from time to time, add new
strings. Same thing happens with RedHat, Mandrake, SUSE, and other
distributions.

> 
> I filed a bug about this in Rosetta but the response was that it is a
> featue rather than a bug :)

Exactly, we cannot ask GNOME's l10n project to translate our specific
strings.

> 
> Again, we have to take into notice that GNOME uses coordinated
> approach on L10ns, meaning there is an official team for each languege
> and the team agrees on tranlation style and glossary, which greatly
> improves translation consistency. Some team members also translate
> modules offline and this is always announced within the team members,
> wheras if non-members can just log on to Rosetta and start
> translating, the result again is multiple work.

That's exactly why we are preparing Rosetta to let GNOME translators to
use it to do their translations using exactly what they have at GNOME's
CVS and in this case, to prevent any duplication work we will lock the
team rights so only the official coordinators at GNOME will be able to
accept / reject translators so people will need to join GNOME's teams.

For Ubuntu is another history, for instance:

 - we will ship translation updates up to 18 months after release and
GTP will not keep translating GNOME's releases so far.
 - Sometimes, we add new strings specific for Ubuntu, we need to
translate them.
 - There are users that knows nothing about GNOME or KDE they only know
about an application they like and we provide them an easy way to
collaborate translating it.
 - Ubuntu is a distribution not just the GNOME Desktop and thus,
sometimes we will want to improve the translations diverging from
upstream to pick a common term across all applications: an easy example
would be the translation of 'File' in Spanish, GNOME translates it as
'Archivo' but KDE translates it as 'Fichero' that's bad and confuses the
users. Our plans in the future is that we would fix things like those
with upstream trying to reach a common translation, if it's not possible
we will modify those strings.

In the other hand, to prevent work duplication:

 - the translations added to Ubuntu will appear in any other .pot file
that has that same msgid accross the system so if upstream uses Rosetta,
they get it for free to (like we do atm with our automatic imports).
 - We ask our translation teams that collaborate with upstream so their
translations land into GNOME too, but we don't have the resources to do
it by ourselves so is up to them...

I know current situation is not ideal, but we are doing our best and
will improve it over time, but I hope this time you get clear why Ubuntu
imports GNOME (and KDE and any other project that has a translation
team).

> 
> Joining the official GNOME L10n team is very is and merely requires to
> notify the team and receive some tralsation hints and glossary lists,
> as well as todo lists and names of the modules peple are translating
> offline.

I know that, that's why we ask our translators to collaborate.

> 
> I can understand that Ubuntu might want to have its own L10n team for
> GNOME, but this will give us to different GNOME L10ns, and I do
> believe it is better to include the official GNOME L10ns.

No, Ubuntu does not want to have its own l10n team for GNOME but a l10n
team for the whole distribution, that's a different thing.

> 
> So, I guess the best way to handle this would be to remove GNOME
> modules from Ubuntu Breezy project or link them to the official GNOME
> project.

I hope you understand now that it's not needed to do this.

> 
> I am cross-posting it to GNOME list in case GNOME L10ns manager has
> some idea about solving this.

Ok

Cheers.

> 
> Best regards,
> Aiet Kolkhi
> 
> http://www.Gakartuleba.org
> -- 
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> rosetta-users at lists.ubuntu.com
> http://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
Valencia - Spain
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