What happens to translations when upstream is brought in

[Bob Mauchin]

Hi,
I was a Rosetta user (i'll stay of course) and i move upstream to a
GNOME translation team. Here is my two cents about Rosetta:

- it's far easier to translate from a po file : there is no page to
loads, its easier to read the full text in emacs or gedit. Look at
Evolution, there are 4544 strings to translate/review which means 455
pages to load in Rosetta. Quite boring.

- There is no detailled status : ok this package has been translated,
but how many people has reviewed it? Rosetta nead status like :
Translated, Reviewed, Locked (or To commit)

- we don't really know who work on what

- anybody can mess up your translation without even asking you

- it would be great to tell Rosetta users they can bring bugs upstream
with http://bugzilla.gnome.org and http://bugs.kde.org/ .

>Daniel Nylander:
>"I do not like the idea of having the header in translations
"relicensed" by Canonical""

And I don't think that upstream teams will be please by that.

>Matthew East:
>"It makes perfect sense to be able to change translations for a
specific distribution, in the same way that a specific distribution
will apply patches to an upstream product."

I agree with this, but why don't we just modify translation of patched
products. Translating is pretty long process, and I don't see a reason
good enough to remake it from the beginning.

>Og. Maciel:
>It is MHO that any team, Gnome/KDE/you-name-it, would be at an
advantage point if they were to take advantage of what Rosetta can
offer now

What advantage does really offer Rosetta to upstream team? Sorry but I
can't see it.

>Og. Maciel:
> "You have to learn about PO files, how to handle them, how the file headers should be treated, how something should be marked as fuzzy, maybe even create a diff (maybe?), etc..."

That's not a big problem, really. There are tools to do that
automatically. But you still have to tell people about guideline, typo
etc... and it's a bit harder to learn.

>Enrique Mat?as S?nchez:
>b) give the upstream translator privileges in Rosetta to unlock the
strings in the files he translates

I wonder if all upstream translator will come in Rosetta "to unlock
his string". Some of them simply don't care about Rosetta. (And it is
not free software: that's surely a good reason for many of them).

IMHO, before thinking of bringing upstream team in Rosetta, we should
find a way to perfect this tool.

Bob.

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