Summary of the the discussions on documentation translation at UDS

[David Planella]

Hi all,

Here's a summary of some of the topics we talked about and the actions
we agreed on when we were discussing translation of documentation at
UDS.

== Template names ==

Translation templates in Ubuntu are shown in a big list at
https://translations.launchpad.net/ubuntu. As the Launchpad Translations
team will be focusing on providing better upstream integration, there
will be no changes in terms of how translations are displayed for this
cycle.

This means that if templates have the same name (as in some of them in
kubuntu-docs and ubuntu-docs), they are shown as if they were duplicate,
which is confusing for translators e.g.:

add-applications
add-applications
printing
printing

We decided to prefix those templates with the source package name in
order to tell them apart, following the scheme already proposed some
time ago and also used in some other packages (e.g. ubiquity-ubuntu-,
debian-installer-). This scheme involves prepending the source package
name to the template, which using the previous example would be:

ubuntu-docs-add-applications
kubuntu-docs-add-applications
ubuntu-docs-printing
kubuntu-docs-printing

This will imply no additional work for the maintainers, simply the
template name will be renamed in Launchpad (the templates in the source
packages can keep their original names, and will be automatically
imported to the right template in Launchpad when uploading the package).

== Kubuntu docs ==

We acknowledged the fact that due to lack of time Kubuntu docs
translations were not released for Karmic, and before going further, I'd
like to thank Richard Johnson and Jonathan Jesse for their work on
Kubuntu docs.

Some translation teams, notably the Hungarian team, made an extra effort
to complete translations for the Kubuntu documentation. Although by
Richard and Jonathan's comments the current release needs improvement
and presents some bugs, it would be worth adding the translations in a
Stable Release Update (SRU).

There is an open bug to track this, and we'd like to move this update
forward. Is there anything else the translations team can do to prepare
the SRU?

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/kubuntu-docs/+bug/459476

So far, the obsolete translation templates have been disabled in
Launchpad and are not exposed for translations, and the visible ones
seem to be up to date.

== Xubuntu docs ==

We talked to Jim Campbell and decided to move the xubuntu-docs
translations out of the Ubuntu distro series and to a separate project
in Launchpad.

This is due to the fact that the xubuntu-docs package is no longer in
main, which is a requirement for translations to be there (and for
templates to be updated upon package upload). 

The templates in e.g.
https://translations.launchpad.net/ubuntu/karmic/xubuntu-docs were not
up to date and were only there because they hadn't been disabled until
now.

The advantages in having translations in a separate branch will be
mainly for maintainers: they will no longer have to worry about updating
templates (they'll be updated in Launchpad upon commit) or exporting
translations (they will be automatically commited to a branch daily) -
this functionality is not yet available in source packages.

The only disadvantage will be that the translations will not have as
much visibility as they had inside the Ubuntu distro series in Launchpad
before.

The translations team will offer any help required in this migration,
which will involve:

     1. Disabling the xubuntu-docs templates in the Karmic and Jaunty
        distro series translations in Launchpad (Lucid as well, altough
        they are not yet visible)
     2. Exporting current translations
     3. Set up the xubuntu-docs bzr branch for translations (with
        automatic bzr import and exports)
     4. Commit the exported translations to that branch, which will make
        them available in Launchpad
     5. Announce the changes to ubuntu-translators and ubuntu-doc

Of these steps Adi tells me he has already completed 1 (for Karmic) and
2, and he'll be working with Jim for the rest. There is a bug filed to
track the progress of this task ->
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/489285

Please let me know if you've got any comments or questions.

Regards,
David.

-- 
David Planella
Ubuntu Translations Coordinator
david(dot)planella(at)ubuntu(dot)com
www.ubuntu.com



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