Ensuring Quality in Ubuntu Translations

[Clytie Siddall]

On 11/04/2006, at 3:44 AM, Matthew East wrote:

> So how can Ubuntu translation teams do similar quality assurance? This
> is where teams should share their experiences, in my view.

We don't yet have an Ubuntu team, but these issues have come up  
elsewhere.

They're particularly difficult for us, because public discussion of  
faults is inappropriate, public mistakes of any kind fatal to  
reputation and thus participation.

How do we handle this? Largely by controlling upload. If Rosetta  
doesn't allow that, we will have great difficulty.

1. The aspiring translator asks to join the group.

2. S/he is asked to read the Howtos, in both languages. Common  
difficulties (e.g. KDE non-conformance with gettext norms) are  
discussed. (General discussions of difficulties go to our maiing  
list, any individual mistakes are discussed privately.)

3. The new translator is assigned a small file.

4. S/he completes it and submits it to the team-leader or other  
assigned supervisor.

5. The team-leader reviews the file, then writes privately to the new  
translator, discussing any areas which are not yet up to standard. If  
the file has few errors, the team-leader edits its and uploads it. If  
the file has many errors, it is returned to the new translator for re- 
editing.

The assign-translate-review process continues until the translator  
demonstrates sufficient and consistent quality to be trusted with  
solo translation.

No file is uploaded unless it is up to standard. This is managed by  
the team-leader and other experienced translators. The project is  
relying on this QA, so if we can't perform it, we shouldn't be  
translating.

In a situation where an online tool like Rosetta or Pootle is  
involved, again the team-leader and other experienced translators  
need to take the responsibility for approving data. There needs to be  
an effective ratio between experienced and less-experienced  
translators, so QA can be performed. I have found this early time,  
which you spend with the new translator, is essential, and avoids  
many problems later on.

Then again, I'm a lot older than most others, which gives me  
responsibility in my culture, and makes it appropriate for me to  
teach and generally mentor others. I don't know how well that works  
for other cultures.

The upload control is crucial, otherwise, how do you ensure data of  
high quality is sent upstream? We just had an awkward situation,  
where an older translator who still needs supervision (i.e. is  
producing translations of low quality) asked for SVN write access to  
our repository. We explained that this is not appropriate. Anyone can  
_get_ files (anonymous SVN or websvn) but only the experienced  
translators assigned to QA can upload them.

from Clytie (vi-VN, Vietnamese free-software translation team / nhóm  
Việt hóa phần mềm tự do)
http://groups-beta.google.com/group/vi-VN


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